This technology involves an electrolyte design that creates a crystalline solid electrolyte by combining a thiophenium-based cation with a fluorohydrogenate-based anion, then doping it with lithium salt to maximize lithium-ion mobility through interstitial sites in an orthorhombic crystal structure.
Conventional liquid electrolytes suffer from issues such as leakage, volatility, thermal instability, and explosion risks. Conversely, typical solid electrolytes have faced limitations in practical application due to low ionic conductivity.
This technology produces a compound combining thiophenium and fluorohydrogenate, places lithium salt in the interstitial sites of the orthorhombic crystal structure, and controls the compound's melting entropy to 15–25 J/K·mol to ensure flexibility within the crystalline phase, achieving ionic conductivity of over 200 mS/cm at room temperature. Its strength lies in enabling liquid-level conductivity in a solid state, making it suitable for leak-free, high-safety lithium secondary batteries and small cells for wearable devices.
This invention was developed with support from the Ministry of Science and ICT for the development of a high-energy-density soft materials platform through the design of new organic superionic plastic crystal materials.
This technology provides a pharmaceutical composition for the prevention and treatment of endometriosis, as well as a health functional food composition for prevention and improvement, containing one of quercetin, luteolin, or delphinidin as an active ingredient, combined with the PI3K/AKT signaling pathway inhibitor LY294002.
Endometriosis causes infertility in 35–50% of women of childbearing age, but it is primarily diagnosed based on symptoms, and 30–40% of cases recur within five years even after surgical lesion removal. Hormone therapies using GnRH agonists or aromatase inhibitors have reported side effects and drug resistance, while plant-derived treatments have been limited by a lack of research into their mechanisms of action and safety.
This technology is based on the finding that flavonoids found in vegetables and berries inhibit the phosphorylation of downstream PI3K/AKT signaling molecules in endometriosis cells. It combines these with the targeted inhibitor LY294002, which acts on the same pathway, and can be further configured with U0126 or SB203580 to block the MAPK pathway. It also includes methods for inhibiting the proliferation and increasing the apoptosis of non-human mammalian endometriosis cell lines. Applicable to post-surgical recurrence prevention, gynecological health supplements for women of childbearing age, and non-hormonal endometriosis drug development, this approach uses dual inhibition via dietary flavonoids and signaling pathway inhibitors to suppress the growth of ectopic endometrial cells without hormonal blockade.
This invention was developed with support from the Ministry of Health and Welfare for verifying the efficacy of fetal-derived mesenchymal stem cell therapies for treating inflammatory preterm birth.
This technology utilizes the synthetic phenolic antioxidant butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA), commonly used as a food preservative, as an active ingredient. It provides pharmaceutical and health functional food compositions for preventing or treating Leydig cell tumors, Sertoli cell tumors, orchitis, epididymitis, testicular cancer, and hydrocele caused by the hyperplasia of Leydig or Sertoli cells.
Leydig cells in the testes are responsible for testosterone synthesis, while Sertoli cells are responsible for spermatogenesis. A disruption in calcium homeostasis can lead to cellular abnormalities and infertility, yet there has been a lack of therapeutic agents directly targeting the abnormal proliferation of these cells. While BHA has been reported to inhibit steroid synthesis enzymes, its therapeutic efficacy for male reproductive diseases had not been previously confirmed.
This technology claims the mechanism of action by which BHA activates the MAPK signaling pathway and induces endoplasmic reticulum stress in testicular cells to inhibit proliferation and promote apoptosis. It targets hyperproliferative diseases in both interstitial Leydig cells and seminiferous tubule Sertoli cells. It also includes methods for inhibiting proliferation and enhancing apoptosis in non-human mammalian testicular cell lines. Applicable as an adjuvant for testicular tumors, a health functional food for managing orchitis and hydrocele, and a model for veterinary testicular disease research, this approach repurposes a food additive with extensive safety data to shorten the development time for new drugs targeting two types of testicular somatic cell diseases.
This invention was developed with support from the Ministry of Science and ICT for research into the role of sideroxylin extracted from Callistemon viminalis in the prevention and treatment of gynecological cancers.
This technology creates hollow, multilayered porous silicon arrays by electroplating silicon microspheres onto a polymer template and subsequently removing the template. This structure mitigates the volumetric expansion stress that occurs during lithium charge and discharge cycles while maximizing the reaction surface area.
While silicon anode materials offer extremely high theoretical capacity, they suffer from excessive volumetric expansion—up to 4.12 times—during charge and discharge, leading to structural cracking and collapse. This results in shortened cycle life and the disruption of electron transport pathways within the electrode.
This technology involves self-assembling polymer microspheres to create a template, coating them with silicon via electroplating, and removing the polymer through heat treatment to produce a hollow, porous silicon microsphere structure. If necessary, conductivity can be enhanced by applying carbon, metal, or non-metal inorganic conductive materials via atomic layer deposition (ALD). Applicable to high-capacity silicon anodes for long-range electric vehicle cells or thin-film micro-batteries, the internal void space acts as a buffer for expansion, preventing the electrode structure from easily collapsing even after repeated charging.
This technology improves the electrical conductivity and rate capability of lithium titanate (LTO) powder by forming a metal or conductive inorganic coating layer on the particle surface using atomic layer deposition (ALD).
Lithium titanate suffers from low electronic conductivity, which leads to high reaction resistance and poor rate capability during rapid charging and discharging. Conventional carbon coating methods have limitations, as the carbon tends to oxidize during high-temperature heat treatment, reducing its effectiveness in enhancing conductivity.
This technology involves alloying lithium titanate particles with metals such as Cu or Al, or doping them with heterogeneous elements, and then forming single or dual coating layers of metal or non-metal conductive inorganic materials on the particle surface via atomic layer deposition to establish an electrical conduction network. Suitable for applications requiring high current flow in short durations, such as regenerative braking batteries for hybrid vehicles or industrial uninterruptible power supplies (UPS), this method avoids the oxidation issues associated with carbon coating heat treatment and allows for the precise design of conductive pathways at the particle level.
This technology enables the wet synthesis of solid electrolytes by utilizing imidazolium cation-based onium salt compounds (ionic liquids) as solvents. It allows for stable solid electrolyte synthesis across a wide temperature range of 100–400°C.
Conventional dry processes for all-solid-state batteries have been limited by difficulties in scaling up. Even when wet processes are applied, uneven contact between the solid electrolyte and electrodes often leads to reduced capacity and performance.
This technology utilizes onium salt compounds composed of imidazolium cations and anions such as BF4-, NO3-, PF6-, and AsF6- as solvents to perform wet synthesis at 100–400°C. These solvents maintain a low viscosity of 4–6 cP at 100°C, ensuring excellent dispersibility, mitigating electrolyte leakage and short circuits, and enhancing high-temperature ionic conductivity. Applicable to the mass production of sulfide and oxide-based solid electrolytes, it overcomes the scale-up constraints of dry processes to enable large-area electrolyte manufacturing.
This technology is a 3D network-based polymer binder that incorporates self-healing ureido-pyrimidinone (UPy) side chains and ion-conductive poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) side chains into a polyacrylic acid backbone, buffering silicon volume expansion while securing lithium-ion transport pathways.
Silicon anodes suffer from significant volume expansion and contraction during charge and discharge cycles, leading to particle pulverization and SEI layer degradation. These issues cause the active material to detach from the current collector and the electrode structure to collapse, limiting battery lifespan and efficiency.
This technology utilizes a graft copolymer binder that provides self-healing functionality through reversible UPy hydrogen bonding and enhances ion conductivity via PEG grafting, allowing the physical network within the electrode to recover from structural damage. Applicable to high-capacity next-generation silicon-rich anodes and long-life EV anode slurries, it maintains over 96% coulombic efficiency for 350 cycles while simultaneously reducing ion transport resistance.
This technology produces metal-carbon composite catalysts using N-Methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP)-based monomers and metal precursors. By adjusting the type of organic additive, it controls the carbon matrix morphology (sheet or porous) and the metal bonding state (ionic or particulate). The metal binds to nitrogen-doped carbon to form M-N active sites, while metal particles are protected by an outer carbon shell for enhanced stability.
Conventional carbon-based catalysts suffer from difficult structure control, low process efficiency, and reliance on environmentally harmful acid/base treatments. Furthermore, noble metal catalysts like platinum or ruthenium are expensive, while low-cost metal catalysts often lack the activity and long-term stability required for oxygen reduction (ORR) and oxygen evolution (OER) reactions.
This technology involves radical polymerization, heat treatment, and carbonization of monomers containing NMP and metal precursors. By selectively using organic additives like 4-aminopyridine or pyrrole-2-carboxylic acid, the structure and porosity of the carbon sheets or sponges can be tuned. Pyridinic and pyrrolic nitrogen doping optimizes metal binding, and the carbon shell improves durability. This allows for the creation of bifunctional catalysts using only low-cost transition metals without acid/base post-treatment, suitable for zinc-air battery air electrodes and fuel cell cathodes.
This technology improves long-term battery life and stability by incorporating needle-shaped carriers with internal pores (e.g., halloysite) into the separator coating layer. Functional additives for SEI formation or side-reaction suppression are loaded into these pores, allowing for the sustained release of additives during charge and discharge cycles.
Lithium-ion batteries have historically faced issues with capacity retention and performance degradation due to side reactions between electrodes and electrolytes during repeated cycling. Furthermore, limitations in separator reliability have persisted due to insufficient basic properties such as coatability, heat resistance, and wettability.
This technology creates a functional structure by loading functional additives into needle-shaped carriers with unidirectional pores using a vacuum method. By controlling the combined content of this structure and the binder to 15–25 wt% of the total coating material, it can be applied to separator coating processes for long-life EV and ESS cells using high-voltage cathodes. This ensures a continuous supply of electrolyte additives through the later stages of cycling while simultaneously enhancing the separator's heat resistance and wettability.
This invention was developed with support from the Ministry of Science and ICT for energy storage and conversion systems based on sustained-release material control.
This technology involves fractionally extracting sesame meal with high-pressure supercritical carbon dioxide to obtain high-lignan sesame oil. Ethanol is then added to convert neutral lipids into fatty acid ethyl esters, followed by low-pressure supercritical carbon dioxide extraction to remove the ethyl esters, leaving behind a concentrated lignan residue. Purity can be further enhanced through non-polar solvent crystallization if necessary.
Lignans in sesame, such as sesamin, sesamolin, and sesamol, offer various physiological benefits, including antioxidant effects, cholesterol reduction, and improved liver function. However, sesame meal—the byproduct of pressing sesame oil—has largely been sold at low prices for animal feed or fertilizer. There has been a lack of economical and simple methods to extract lignans from this byproduct with high yield.
In this process, an initial fraction (0.3–1 parts by weight per 100 parts of sesame meal) is collected at 35–45℃ and 45–51 MPa to obtain sesame oil with over 3% lignan content. Ethyl esterification is then performed by stirring for 10–14 hours at approximately 40℃ using lipase derived from Thermomyces lanuginosus immobilized on a Duolite A568 carrier. Subsequent removal of ethyl esters under low-pressure conditions (58–62℃, 11.5–11.9 MPa) yields a primary concentrate with over 25 wt% lignans. Further processing via reflux cooling with n-hexane, low-temperature crystallization, and vacuum drying produces a secondary concentrate with over 79 wt% lignans. This technology adds value to sesame meal—previously discarded as feed—by converting it into three distinct products: oil, intermediate concentrate, and high-purity lignans, suitable for health supplements, premium high-lignan sesame oil, and antioxidant cosmetics.
This invention was developed with support from the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs for the optimization of high-lignan sesame oil and lignan concentrate production from sesame meal.
This technology involves a method for extracting functional oil from the supernatant of centrifuged Chlamydomonas reinhardtii—a mutant strain with specific base insertions/deletions in the ZEP and AGP genes—by adding it to an organic solvent at a ratio of 80–120 mL/g and applying 20–60 kHz ultrasonic treatment. It also covers oil compositions, emulsions, and food compositions made from this oil.
It is difficult to meet the 10mg daily recommended intake of lutein and zeaxanthin for eye health through a standard diet, and marigold flowers, the primary source, are expensive due to low yield per cultivation area and long growth cycles. While research has explored producing lutein from microalgae like Chlorella, these methods often suffer from excessively low zeaxanthin content, making it difficult to obtain sufficient amounts of both pigments.
This technology uses a mutant strain with a deactivated zeaxanthin epoxidase (ZEP) to ensure zeaxanthin accumulates without converting into other pigments. Extraction time is reduced by applying ultrasound at 33–40°C for 140–160 minutes and inducing phase separation with polar solvents like potassium chloride or sodium chloride. The extracted oil is mixed with corn, soybean, sesame, or sunflower oil and emulsified with a pH 3–5 acetic or citric acid buffer and an emulsifier to ensure storage stability. Applicable to eye health supplements for macular degeneration, lutein-fortified dressings and beverages, and microalgae-based carotenoid production, this method allows for the mass production of oil rich in both lutein and zeaxanthin from cultured microalgae, eliminating the need for marigold cultivation.
This invention was developed with support from the Ministry of Science and ICT for the development of high-efficiency CO2-fixing microalgae through molecular biological improvement.
This technology improves electrical conductivity and charge-discharge performance by irradiating lithium titanate (LTO) or silicon anode active materials with an electron beam to induce changes in the crystal lattice and the generation of trapped electrons, while simultaneously cross-linking the polymer binder.
While lithium titanate (Li4Ti5O12) offers excellent lifespan and safety, its electrical conductivity is inherently low, at around 10^-9 S/cm. This has historically led to significant initial capacity loss and poor rate capability.
This technology improves electrical conductivity by irradiating the anode active material itself or the slurry coating layer containing the active material with an electron beam at 0.5–10 MeV and 10–1000 kGy. This process induces chemical cross-linking of the polymer binder, strengthening the contact between the active material and the conductive agent. It can be applied to ESS for power grid frequency regulation requiring long lifespans, fast-charging batteries for electric buses, and auxiliary power sources for cold starting, thereby reinforcing high-rate charge-discharge capabilities while maintaining the inherent safety of LTO.
This technology is an anode manufacturing process that involves depositing a metal film on a silicon substrate, exfoliating the silicon thin film through heat treatment, and then applying a Metal-Assisted Chemical Etching (MACE) process to grow silicon nanowires.
Conventional slurry-type silicon anodes suffer from low electrical conductivity and shortened lifespans due to cumulative mechanical damage caused by silicon volume expansion during charging and discharging. Furthermore, existing nanowire growth processes are complex, which limits their mass production potential.
This technology utilizes a direct process that eliminates the need for conductive additives and binders. By exfoliating a metal film-silicon thin film stacked structure and performing chemical etching with an HF/H2O2 mixed etchant to form nanowires, it simultaneously improves electrical conductivity and cycle life. Because the nanowires are directly attached to the metal film, this structure can be applied to the development of high-energy-density cells for thin mobile batteries and wearables, enabling the realization of anodes with reduced electrode assembly steps and a higher ratio of active materials.
This technology suppresses the oxidative corrosion of metal components, such as current collectors and casing materials, in high-voltage and high-temperature environments by adding a small amount of fluoride salt (MFx), such as NaF, to a lithium imide-based electrolyte to generate fluoride anions (F-).
Unlike LiPF6, conventional lithium imide salts (such as LiN(SO2F)2) do not generate fluoride ions, which leads to the corrosion of aluminum cathode current collectors under harsh conditions like high voltage, high temperature, and overcharging. This results in performance degradation, including self-discharge, capacity loss, and increased internal resistance.
This technology involves dissolving lithium imide salt in a non-aqueous organic solvent, such as EC and DMC, and adding 0.007 to 0.1 wt% of a fluoride salt like NaF to enhance the oxidation resistance of the aluminum current collector. It can be applied to electrolyte design for EV cells using high-voltage cathodes and ESS modules exposed to high-temperature environments, allowing for broader use of imide-based electrolytes without concerns regarding current collector corrosion.
This technology features a bilayer structure with a high-capacity NCM (Li(NixCoyMnz)O2) layer on the current collector and a highly stable LCO (LiCoO2) layer on top, simultaneously achieving high capacity and structural stability.
Using a single material presents trade-offs: NCM offers high capacity but short lifespan, while LCO provides high safety but low capacity. Furthermore, conventional electrodes suffer from rapid degradation and cracking of active materials far from the current collector during repeated cycling, limiting efficiency and lifespan.
This technology forms a 20–40㎛ thick NCM layer on the current collector, topped with an LCO layer 5–10㎛ thicker than the NCM layer. By adjusting the NCM to LCO weight ratio to between 60:40 and 80:20, it optimizes high-voltage stability and cycle life. Applicable to backup power for telecommunications, energy storage systems, transportation batteries, and lithium capacitor electrodes, it improves the balance between capacity and durability simply by combining existing cathode materials.
