Can the monopoly of advanced diaphragm technology for lithium batteries be broken?

Introduction

At present, the sword initiated by the United States refers to the "Chinese-made 2025" trade war that continues to ferment. The "ZTE incident" has caused a strong shock in the industry. Recently, the United States appeared to point the finger at Huawei, the global communications equipment giant, once again setting off the pain of the lack of core technology in Chinese manufacturing. In the coming menacing trade war, the United States step by step, multi-line fire, China's power lithium battery industry should also guard against similar risks.

According to battery China Network, at present, more than 200 power battery manufacturers in China have the largest number of power battery companies in the world. Chinese companies accounted for seven of the top 10 global battery sales in 2017, according to data. China's share of the global battery market is expected to exceed 70 per cent by 2020, Forbes News reported.

Although China has formed a relatively complete power battery industry chain, the scale is already "large" enough, but it is not "strong" enough. Some of the key core technologies are still subject to human control, and there is a risk of ZTE "being stuck".

Among them, lithium-battery diaphragm technology is the current power battery industry in China a point of pain. In lithium-ion battery materials, positive and negative electrode materials and electrolytes have basically achieved localization, while the diaphragm started late and the domestic enterprise's technical maturity was not high. Although the domestic rate of lithium battery diaphragm in China has been increasing in recent years, it mainly occupies the low-end 3C battery diaphragm market. The domestic rate of high-end diaphragm is still very low, and high-end 3C batteries and power batteries are still heavily dependent on imports.

According to the "Energy Conservation and New Energy Vehicle Industry Development Plan(2011-2020)" issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, by 2020, China's production capacity of pure electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid vehicles will reach 2 million vehicles per year. According to this estimate, in the future, the demand for high-quality automotive battery diaphragm materials will reach hundreds of millions of square meters.

It is well known that in the structure of lithium batteries, the diaphragm is one of the key inner components, both to prevent positive and negative contact, and to ensure the passage of electrolyte ions. Therefore, the quality of the diaphragm will directly affect the battery's capacity, circulation and safety performance, and the quality of the diaphragm has an important role in improving the comprehensive performance of the battery.

It is reported that the diaphragm is currently the highest value added material in the lithium electric material, accounting for about 15 % of the cost of lithium batteries. Its technical difficulties lie in the engineering technology of perforation, Matrix materials, and manufacturing equipment.

The current common problems in domestic diaphragm are the low consistency, mainly manifested in irregular defects, the porosity is not up to standard, the thickness, pore distribution and the uneven distribution of aperture. One-way tensile PP diaphragm is close to foreign products in terms of porosity and aperture distribution. The porosity of PE diaphragm is usually lower than that of foreign products and the aperture distribution is not ideal. These problems are the potential risks of the industry being "controlled by people". If not solved properly, it may curb the healthy development of lithium power industry in China.

According to Battery China.com, the PP diaphragm of Celgard Diaphragm Co., Ltd. and the PE diaphragm of Asahi represent the highest level of products in the diaphragm industry. Since the acquisition of Celgard by Asahi in 2016, the best diaphragm products have come from Asahi. Several other Japanese companies, such as UBE and Toray, also have higher levels. China has a huge gap between PP diaphragm and PE diaphragm technology and the United States, Japan and other countries, and is in a passive position in the industrial chain.

At present, the main methods for preparing lithium-ion battery diaphragm are wet and dry. China's lithium-ion battery diaphragm has made major breakthroughs in dry process, but in the wet diaphragm field, domestic diaphragm enterprises are limited by many factors such as technology and technology, the product level is still low, and production equipment is heavily dependent on imports.

Like chips, high-end diaphragm technology has a very high threshold, not only to invest huge sums of money, but also to have a strong R&D and production team, sophisticated process technology and high-level production lines, and can not break through in a short time. However, the Sino-U.S. trade war, ZTE Huawei incident has sounded the alarm bell for China's manufacturing industry, for the entire power battery industry, as soon as possible to break through the high-end lithium battery diaphragm technology has been urgent.

Happily, domestic science and technology, star material and other companies in the high-end diaphragm technology has a major breakthrough. We believe that in the near future, China's power lithium battery industry will be able to break the foreign technology monopoly, the initiative in their own hands.

Long in the hand, can catch the dragon. Especially in China's manufacturing industry encountered the international economy "headwind", only master the core technology, will not be subjected to people, in order to avoid the "ZTE" crisis, can become the real "market king"!

The page contains the contents of the machine translation.