When can the ternary material replace lithium cobalt acid?

At present, ternary materials can be described as the darling of lithium batteries, the development speed is very fast, slowly invade the entire application market. After many years of development, lithium cobalt acid has occupied half of the lithium battery market. When can the ternary material replace lithium cobalt acid?

Lithium PK cobalt acid for three-way materials

The ternary material is the nickel cobalt manganese acid Li(NiCoMn) O2, the ternary composite cathode material precursor product, which is based on nickel salt, cobalt salt, manganese salt.

Lithium cobalt acid is generally used as a positive electrode material for lithium ion batteries. Battery structure is stable, capacity ratio is high, and its comprehensive performance is outstanding, but its safety is poor and its cost is very high.

The ternary material is far superior to lithium cobalt acid in terms of cost performance or environmental safety.

Is there still a long way to go to replace lithium cobalt acid with ternary materials?

The first impact of the ternary is the digital product market, the core application area of lithium cobalt. According to the data, in the 2013 positive material market, the demand for ternary materials in the Chinese market has reached 15,600 tons, of which 80 % are used for digital products such as laptops, tablets, and mobile phones. Sanyuan material so big move to attack the "vital" of lithium cobalt acid, its menacing situation, can not help but allow the industry to guess that the direction of the technical route is reversing.

However, it should be noted that compared to ternary materials, lithium cobalt acid has a series of performance and technical advantages and is more popular in the market. Therefore, most of the industry is still positive about the current lithium cobalt acid market. They believe that the success of ternary materials to replace lithium cobalt acid, the market orientation is decisive.

In ternary materials, the mass fraction of cobalt is usually controlled at about 20 %. Although the ternary material meets the requirements of "less cobalt" and the cost is also significantly reduced, it still has a certain gap with lithium cobalt acid in terms of compaction density, Gaodianya, high capacity, and high temperature resistance.

Digital devices are becoming lighter and thinner in design, and the requirements for battery capacity are also increasing. As one of the factors that affect the capacity of lithium batteries, the compaction density of positive materials, the monocrystalline granular form of lithium cobalt, can currently achieve a compaction density of 4.2 g/cm3, which is an unimagined difficulty of the ternary material as a secondary aggregate of small particles. challenge, Become the "hard injury" of the three-part material development blueprint.

In fact, the only mature batteries that can meet the standby requirements of mobile devices are lithium cobalt acid batteries. In the field of consumer digital products, lithium cobalt acid batteries are still in a dominant position.

Although the market demand for ternary materials has increased, its market share is still different from that of lithium cobalt. Moreover, there are short plates in the following aspects of ternary materials.

There are many enterprises of ternary materials but not strong. According to statistics, as of the end of 2016, enterprises with more than 8,000 tons of domestic shipments of ternary materials have not yet appeared, and the products of major enterprises are seriously homogenized, with models 523 and 111 being the main ones. At the same time, driven by Tesla, the domestic ternary power battery set off an expansion climax. Material companies have added a number of ternary material companies since the second half of 2015. In the future, with the continuous advancement of technology, the demand for long-range range batteries has increased, and the demand for ternary materials has become prosperous. Under the positive background, a large number of new entrants will emerge in the market.

The lack of core patents and the duplication of low-end production capacity. At present, the global patent for lithium nickel-cobalt manganese acid is mainly in the hands of 3M and Agun laboratories in the United States. BASF, Ruixiang, and Agun have the right to purchase 3M or Agun laboratory patents, and domestic patents are relatively weak at one time. After the large-scale development in the future, patent disputes will arise in the export chamber.

At present, the domestic ternary material model is mainly 523. Whether digital or power batteries are used in ternary materials, the most used is still Model 523. Judging from the shape of the battery, NCM523 is commonly used in the original three-part battery in China, and NCM111 is used in the three-part power battery using the lamination process. The output of the three-part cylinder is greater than that of the square laminated battery.

The potential of ternary materials in the future market is huge, and it is currently in the rising stage. With the development of technology and the continuous self-improvement of enterprises, the future market usage is also likely to exceed lithium cobalt acid. It can only be said that the road beyond lithium cobalt acid is relatively long.

The page contains the contents of the machine translation.