ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 12 -- United States Patent no. 12,300,812, issued on May 13, was assigned to TOYOTA JIDOSHA K.K. (Toyota, Japan).

"Active material, anode layer, battery, and methods for producing these" was invented by Mitsutoshi Otaki (Susono, Japan), Jun Yoshida (Mishima, Japan), Kazuhiro Suzuki (Hadano, Japan) and Masanori Harata (Kariya, Japan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A main object of the present disclosure is to provide an active material wherein a volume variation due to charge/discharge is small. The present disclosure achieves the object by providing an active material comprising a silicon clathrate II type crystal phase, including a void inside a primary particle, and a v...