NAGOYA, Japan — NGK Insulators, the Japanese ceramics group best known for its sodium-sulfur NAS grid batteries, is shutting that flagship line after an Oct. 31 board vote and pivoting its growth strategy toward advanced ceramics platforms such as hydrogen-separating membranes, gallium nitride wafers, and ultra-thin EnerCera IoT cells. The company is betting that these higher-value ceramic technologies, embedded deep in industrial processes, semiconductors, and maintenance-free IoT devices, will do more to cut emissions and stabilize grids than continuing to battle cheaper lithium-ion batteries, Dec. 9, 2025.
In a November report from industry outlet ESS News, NGK said the NAS exit would trigger roughly ¥18 billion (about $117 million) in one-off costs and cited “surges in material costs and intensifying competition with lithium-ion batteries” alongside slower-than-expected adoption of long-duration storage. The company stressed that it will continue to honor existing contracts, ship from inventory, and supply maintenance parts to the fleet of NAS systems already in the field.
The decision closes a two-decade chapter in which NAS batteries became one of the world’s most established long-duration storage technologies, with more than 250 installations and around 5 GWh of capacity deployed globally. NGK only last year shipped advanced NAS MODEL L24 systems to Taiwan’s state utility and other customers, pitching their low degradation and multi-hour discharge as tools to smooth renewable power and bolster resilience. Those deployments built on early showcase projects such as a 2018 pilot at Dubai’s Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park, where NAS units demonstrated how multi-hour storage could firm output from one of the Gulf’s largest solar plants.
NGK doubles down on advanced ceramics
Even as it winds down NAS, NGK has been reshaping itself around advanced ceramics that sit inside the energy transition rather than at the edge of the grid. Under its “Road to 2050” vision, the company aims to derive a growing majority of its revenue from ceramic components that serve a digital, low-carbon society, including sensor-grade substrates, CO₂ capture devices, and solid oxide cells. That trajectory was sketched in a BBC StoryWorks feature on EnerCera and CO₂-cutting ceramics, which highlighted plans to lift digital and carbon-neutral products from 30% of sales to 50% by 2030 and 80% by mid-century.
Ceramic membranes are a core pillar of this shift. NGK has developed sub-nanometre-pore membranes capable of separating gases as similar in size as hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide with high precision, durability, and heat resistance, allowing them to operate where polymer membranes fail. In 2024, the company deepened that push through a joint hydrogen purification project with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, using membrane separation on ammonia cracking gas to help build future hydrogen and ammonia supply chains. The partners say the technology could cut the energy penalty of hydrogen purification and support large-scale, cleaner fuel logistics for industry and power.
GaN wafers and ultra-thin IoT cells extend the reach of advanced ceramics.
NGK is also leaning on advanced ceramics in the semiconductor stack. On the device side, it has developed its high-crystallinity gallium nitride wafers, including semi-insulating types for 5G and 6G base-station RF devices and conductive wafers for EV and power electronics. The wafers use a proprietary liquid-phase crystal growth method to achieve low dislocation densities and, in some variants, bond GaN films to silicon carbide bases, improving heat dissipation and efficiency. Analysts say such high-performance substrates can help trim energy losses in data centers, telecom networks, and inverters, amplifying their climate impact well beyond the fab floor.
At the opposite end of the power spectrum, NGK is positioning EnerCera ultra-thin rechargeable batteries as ceramic-enabled “forever” cells for tags, wearables, and edge sensors. Built as semi-solid lithium-ion cells that use crystal-oriented ceramic plates for electrodes, EnerCera units combine high capacity, high output, wide operating temperatures, and low risk of ignition in packages as thin as a fraction of a millimeter, making them suitable for smart cards, medical patches, and industrial sensor nodes. NGK first flagged this direction with its 2018 launch of the EnerCera chip-type ceramic secondary battery, and today the company is expanding distribution through component e-commerce platforms while more than 600 customers test EnerCera-based designs.
The strategic pivot away from NAS batteries does not mark a retreat from energy storage so much as a move upstream, from shipping steel containers to supplying the advanced ceramics inside tomorrow’s hydrogen plants, power electronics, and maintenance-free IoT networks. Through membranes that lower the energy cost of separations, wide-bandgap wafers that squeeze more performance from electrons, and ultra-thin cells that cut battery waste, NGK is wagering that advanced ceramics will be its most powerful lever for a net-zero future — even if its most iconic grid battery is headed for the archive.
