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      "text": "Red flag 7: Ex-employees indicate 1% of the obstacle is testing a dendrite-resistant material, which others have done and isn't difficult, but 99% is manufacturing it at scale, where QS has shown nothing and where companies flop.",
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      "text": "A former R&D employee stated that making a solid-state separator material that resists dendrites has \"actually been before\" and \"is not that difficult.\" He stated that the challenge for 50 years has been manufacturing the separator at scale, and that \"multiple companies have gone bankrupt because of PPM-level [parts per million] failures.\"",
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      "text": "Previous companies with a dendrites solution have gone bust when they started manufacturing \"There are two parts to the dendrites problem. One is the materials part. Some failure modes have to do with the mechanical properties of the material. The other set have to do with the quality of any of the components that have lithium metal in contact with the electrolyte, and there are all sorts of issues in making sure you get every single one reliably at 100% in each cell all the time. Multiple companies have essentially gone bankrupt because of PPM-level failures in the field of these cells and dendrites and consequential explosion.\" – Former R&D employee",
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      "text": "The real difficulty is not in coming up with a solid-state separator material but manufacturing a \"thin uniform layer\" of it at scale",
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      "text": "\"There are two parts to the problem. One is making the ceramic separator material itself. This is something that is not that difficult, actually. And then you have to bond it and make it a thin uniform layer; that's the hard part. That's where a process called sintering is used, which is high-temperature exposure of a preform of what you want and then the grains glue themselves to each other, kind of like soap bubbles coalescing. It's the same physics, surface tension...Lithium metal has been looked at for 50 years, and dendrites have been the bane throughout. You can't solve the problem in the absence of an engineering protocol that assures that all places in this actual cell and the quality is sufficient.\" – Former R&D employee",
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      "text": "\"There are two parts to the problem. One is making the ceramic separator material itself. This is something that is not that difficult, actually. And then you have to bond it and make it a thin uniform layer; that's the hard part... Lithium metal has been looked at for 50 years, and dendrites have been the bane throughout. You can't solve the problem in the absence of an engineering protocol that assures that all places in this actual cell and the quality is sufficient.\" — Former R&D employee; \"There are two parts to the dendrites problem. One is the materials part... The other set have to do with the quality of any of the components that have lithium metal in contact with the electrolyte, and there are all sorts of issues in making sure you get every single one reliably at 100% in each cell all the time. Multiple companies have essentially gone bankrupt because of PPM-level failures in the field of these cells and dendrites and consequential explosion.\" — Former R&D employee",
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      "text": "Source: Scorpion Capital consultation calls with experts",
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      "text": "Red flag 7: Ex-employees indicate 1% of the obstacle is testing a dendrite-resistant material, which others have done and isn't difficult, but 99% is manufacturing it at scale, where QS has shown nothing and where companies flop.",
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      "text": "3) Phony claim A: Solid-state material resists dendrites",
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