Sheet1: Comparison between different lithium ion battery chemistries (Batteryuniversity.com, 2020)
Sheet1 shows a comparison between different lithium ion battery chemistries. The following information is summarized to mark the technical pathway of lithium ion battery.
- LTO excels in safety, cycle life and charging rate, but the low energy density and high cost limit the application in electric vehicles.
- LMO is moderate in overall performance; most LMO battery blend with NCM to improve the energy density and prolong the cycle life. So typically, LMO (NMC) is chosen for electric vehicles application but existing limited growth potential.
- LFP has excellent performance of safety and long cycle life but moderate energy density. LFP is primarily used in energy storage and the special vehicles which have a low requirement to battery energy density, high demand for battery safety performance.
- NMC is the most favorable chemistry for many automobile manufacturers, and NMC market share is increasing due to NMC can be built economically and it achieves excellent performance. Nickel ingredient can contribute to the energy density of cathode material; Manganese and Cobalt help the chemical and structural stability of cathode material in a broad sense. The price of Manganese and Nickel is relatively steady and low; the cost of Cobalt is sensitive and expensive. The three materials of Nickel, Manganese and Cobalt effectively can be blended to output a wide of performance, so the NMC family is growing in its diversity, which includes NMC111, NMC532, NMC622 and the newest NMC811(See figure 3). NMC 811 will be better and cheaper, which is the next generation cathode to push the driving range of electric vehicles above 500km and accomplish price parity with the internal combustion engine soon (Research Interfaces, 2018). However, there are a lot of debates about the safety of high Nickel
lithium ion battery
. Kim et al. (2018) and Hou et al. (2017) state that the reduction of Manganese and Cobalt and increase of unstable Nickel will most likely lead to threatening the structural stability of cathode material
Figure 3: Comparison of NMC cathode compositions and their energy density
- NCA is consist of three materials of Nickel, Manganese and Aluminum, typically 80% Nickel and 15% Cobalt, but 5% aluminum as opposed to Manganese.NCA shows high similarities with NMC by offering higher energy density but less cycle life than NCM from the battery level. NCA is also expected to another dominate customer requirements for the foreseeable future because of the vehicle performance success of Tesla electric vehicle combined by Panasonic cylinder batteries and Tesla's excellent battery management system. But the market size is relatively small excluding to Tesla/Panasonic.
Reference list
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2.Batteryuniversity.com. (2020). Types of Lithium-ion Batteries – Battery University. Available at: https://batteryuniversity.com/index.php/learn/article/types_of_lithium_ion.
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