Lithium-ion battery development process

Lithium-ion batteries were first proposed by Stanley Whittingham, who worked at Exxon in the 1970s and is now at Binghamton University.

In 1980, John B. Goodenough, Koichi Mizushima and others discovered lithium cobalt oxide (LiCoO2), the positive electrode material of lithium-ion batteries, at Oxford University in the United Kingdom.

In 1991, Sony successfully developed lithium-ion batteries. Its practical application greatly reduces the weight and volume of portable electronic devices such as mobile phones and notebook computers, and greatly prolongs the use time. Since the lithium-ion battery does not contain the heavy metal cadmium, compared with the nickel-cadmium battery, the pollution to the environment is greatly reduced.

The lithium ion battery often mentioned in the 3C industry is actually a lithium cobalt oxide battery. In a broad sense, a rechargeable lithium ion battery refers to a graphite negative electrode, a positive electrode using cobalt, manganese or iron phosphate, and a lithium ion battery for transporting lithium. Consisting of an ionic electrolyte. The primary lithium ion battery can use lithium metal or lithium intercalation material as the negative electrode.

The development of the lithium-ion battery industry has been concentrated in the 3C industry for more than 20 years, and it is less used in the energy storage and power battery (instantly large current) market with a larger market economy, which covers pure electric vehicles, gasoline-electric hybrids Vehicles, medium and large UPS, solar energy, large energy storage batteries, electric hand tools, electric motorcycles, electric bicycles, aerospace equipment and aircraft batteries, etc.

One of the main reasons is that the lithium cobalt oxide cathode material (LiCoO2, which is now the most common lithium-ion battery) used in lithium batteries in the past is expensive and difficult to apply in special environments such as puncture, impact, and high temperature and low temperature conditions. More importantly, it has been criticized for failing to meet people's absolute requirements for safety.

At the same time, the lithium cobalt oxide battery cannot achieve the purpose of fast charging and completely avoiding secondary pollution. Moreover, a protection circuit must be designed to prevent overcharging or over-discharging, otherwise it will cause dangers such as explosion, and even lead to explosions such as Sony batteries. The situation of global brand NB operators investing a lot of money to recover.

In addition, the price of cobalt is getting higher and higher. The Democratic Republic of Congo, the largest producer of cobalt in the world, has many wars and turmoil, which has led to the rising price of cobalt. Due to the rising price of cobalt ore, the powder of lithium cobalt oxide battery has now risen from the original US$40 per kilogram to US$60-80. According to the quality of lithium iron phosphate powder, the price per kilogram is 30~80 dollars.

In the past 20 years, the industry and academia in various countries have already invested countless R&D manpower and resources, constantly looking for new materials that can replace or solve the LiCoO2 problem, because, according to statistics, the total economic scale of the global power and energy storage battery market is as high as 50 billion US dollars per year , far greater than the annual appetite of lithium cobalt oxide batteries of 5.5 to 6 billion US dollars. From July 2006 to the present, including Deeya Energy, which has invested in energy storage equipment, Infinite Power Solution, which develops thin-film lithium batteries, and is optimistic about the new generation of lithium-ion batteries—Lithium Ferrous Phosphate (LFP, Lithium Ferrous Phosphate), A123 Systems in the United States, Taiwan Companies such as Aleees and Canada's Phostech Lithium quickly raised large sums of money from global venture capital and other funding sources.