What is the future direction of lithium battery materials and new energy industry?

"In the next five years, the lithium battery industry will usher in great development, or it will last for ten years. With the ternary, metal solid battery will be further developed." Xiangqian Xiao, a well-known lithium battery material and industrialization expert, said recently. Xiangqian Xiao accepted an interview with the reporter and analyzed in depth the future development direction of lithium battery materials and new energy industry.

In recent years, the global new energy automobile industry has experienced explosive growth. China's new energy automobile industry is supported by policies, with sales reaching 777,000 in 2017. Benefiting from the explosive development of electric vehicles, the demand for power battery is growing faster than 3C digital and energy storage batteries, and the market space is huge in the future. It is estimated that in 2020, the scale of China's power lithium battery industry is expected to exceed 160 billion Yuan. It can be said that the Chinese lithium battery market has entered the power battery- driven era in advance.

Xiao Xiang has been deeply involved in the field of new energy for 20 years and is now an executive of Qingdao Dry Transportation High-Tech New Materials Co., Ltd. When reviewing the development of the lithium battery industry, Xiao Xiang sighed that the progress of the past few years can be described as "amazing" and "fast speed".

In 1972, M. Stanley Whittingham and others jointly developed lithium-ion batteries. However, they were in the laboratory stage for about 30 years. Due to factors such as technology and cost, industrialization and commercialization could not be achieved. Power batteries have always been dominated by lead-acid batteries. With the development of electronic products, solid-state batteries or colloidal batteries have made great progress. The 3C industry mainly uses nickel-hydrogen batteries, but its energy density is limited by the limitations of the materials themselves. The cost cannot be effectively reduced significantly, the number of cycles and "memory" make its lifespan greatly limited. A series of problems such as environmental protection determine that this can only be used in stages, and it is necessary to open up new directions.

Entering the 21st century, after a long period of exploration, the industry has gradually established the development direction of lithium-ion batteries, but it has not been established in the specific direction, and is still in a state of exploration. "Because of the technical reasons at the time, lithium cobalt oxide was mainly used as the positive electrode material, but lithium cobalt oxide is expensive, has great toxicity, environmental pollution, poor cycle performance, and can only be temporarily used for 3C batteries, mobile phones and notebook computers. The batteries of other portable electronic devices are mostly prepared by using lithium cobalt oxide as the positive electrode material.” Xiangqian Xiao said, “The use of new energy vehicles and energy storage industry is large, far greater than the 3C industry, the amount of cobalt used in lithium cobalt oxide. Large, but the limited nature of cobalt is also difficult to support."

With the general direction of the lithium battery is basically clear, the space is huge, but the specific metal ratio direction needs technical exploration. To this end, China's first wave of development in 2004-2006, like the original PV industry boom, but it is still healthy, not simply blind. The company represented by BYD invested heavily. At the time, BYD announced that it would invest 5 billion Yuan to develop lithium iron phosphate. Internationally, Japan's Mitsui, Matsushita, and South Korea's Samsung are leading, and the gap between them is about two years.

“Because of the overheated investment, it has been widely criticized in the industry, but the investment has greatly promoted technological progress and made China a major country in the lithium battery industry. At the same time, technological progress, national policies, domestic market, and potential demand have determined the relative health of the industry. Will not take the old road of the photovoltaic industry.” Xiangxiang Xiao believes that although the industry has entered the integration period, the technological progress has not stopped, and the lithium phosphate and lithium manganate have gradually matured, which has promoted the development of the industry. Around 2010, the industry gradually realized that ternary and lithium manganate would be promising cathode materials for lithium batteries. After two rounds of integration, the country announced the development policy of new energy vehicles in 2015, the subsidies are greater, and the industry is welcoming large development opportunities.

Xiangqian Xiao said that the ternary direction is clear, and along with the rapid advancement of technology, the cost of batteries has dropped at an average rate of 15-20% in recent years, and will soon reach an era in which electric vehicles are not subsidized and competitive. Ternary is a broad concept. At present, the domestic mainstream 523 will be over-extended to 622. Of course, 622 is also excessive, and will eventually be upgraded to 811. The laboratory technology of sorghum ternary NCA nickel-cobalt aluminate and NCM nickel-cobalt-manganate is up to 500 kilometers. Tesla announced nearly 900 kilometers. 5V lithium manganate is also a breakthrough in cathode materials, but it is matched. Technology also needs to break through, such as high-end electrolytes, batteries and so on.

In Xiangqian Xiao 's view, the gap between domestic and foreign countries is mainly in terms of purity and yield, so the price of high-end batteries is not dominant. The industry's technological progress is fast, and there is obvious progress every year. Even on a quarterly basis, combined with the availability of materials, safety, low cost, specific capacity, portability, direction of use, etc., the future will be a variety of flowers according to different needs of development. While the anode material will also undergo major changes, metal solid state lithium batteries will likely be a very promising direction. "Current lithium iron phosphate, ternary and other lithium-ion batteries in the discharge process, the temperature of the battery gradually rises, the absolute safety is difficult to solve by the battery itself, metal lithium solid state battery is the ultimate goal of lithium battery."

"The future of the industry will be more mature, the prospects will be brighter, and energy will undergo revolutionary changes. Renewable, distributed, energy storage systems and intelligence will form a new green energy ecological recycling system." Xiangqian Xiao said.

The page contains the contents of the machine translation.