Lithium News

Dramatically longer-lasting, faster-charging and safer lithium metal batteries may be possible, according to Penn State research, recently published in Nature Energy.

The researchers developed a three-dimensional, cross-linked polymer sponge that attaches to the metal plating of a battery anode.

“This project aims to develop the next generation of metal batteries,” said Donghai Wang, professor of mechanical engineering and the principal investigator of the project. “Lithium metal has been tried in batteries for decades, but there are some fundamental issues that inhibit their advancement.”

Under additional strain, like in the fast-charging methods desired in electrical vehicles, lithium ion (Li) batteries are vulnerable to dendritic growth — needle-like formations that can reduce cycle life and potentially cause safety issues — including fires or explosions.

“Our approach was to use a polymer on the interface of Li metal,” Wang explained. The material acts as a porous sponge that not only promotes ion transfer, but also inhibits deterioration.

“This allowed the metal plating to be free of dendrites, even at low temperatures and fast charge conditions,” he said.

Wang, who is an affiliated faculty member at the Penn State Institutes of Energy and the Environment, also belongs to the Battery Energy and Storage Technology Center, a leading research institute in energy storage.

A critical component of both IEE and the BEST Center’s mission, this project brought together researchers from different disciplines within the University.

“The collaboration in this cohort really helped drive this paper forward,” Wang explained. “It allowed us to examine the different aspects of this problem, from materials science, chemical engineering, chemistry, and mechanical engineering perspectives.”

In this collaborative work, Long-Qing Chen’s group in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering conducted modeling work to understand the improvement of Li metal anodes.

The practical applications of this work could enable more powerful and stable metal battery technologies integral to everyday life, according to the researchers.

“In an electric vehicle, it could increase the range of a drive before needing a charge by hundreds of miles,” Wang said. “It could also give smartphones a longer battery life.”

Looking to the future, the team will explore the practical applications in a large-format battery cell to demonstrate its advantages and feasibility.

Wang said, “We want to push these technologies forward. With this work, I’m positive we can double the life cycle of these Li metal batteries.”

Penn State researchers Guoxing Li and Qingquan Huang, postdoctoral fellows in mechanical engineering; Zhe Liu, graduate student in materials science and engineering; Yue Gao, graduate student in chemistry; Michael Regula, graduate student in chemical engineering; and Daiwei Wang graduate student in mechanical engineering, also contributed to the project.

The U.S Department of Energy funded this research.

CEO for Panasonic North America Tom Gebhardt said in an interview that solid-state batteries for electric vehicles are at least a decade out for mass-market electric vehicles.

Known commonly as solid-state batteries, solid-electrolyte batteries are believed to be the next major step in battery technology. They offer superior safety to liquid-electrolyte batteries because of their lesser chance of a fire when their cases are punctured, and offer better energy density, which could translate into smaller, lighter batteries.

Gebhardt told Business Insider that like all technologies, the industry loves to hype up the next major development in the battery field, no matter how far out. He expects current lithium-ion battery technology to undergo gradual refinement, improving energy density, charge rate, safety, and cost-effectiveness.

“We’re still pretty bullish on lithium ion but clearly understand that solid state is something that we all want to get to at some point in the future,” Gebhardt told the publication.

Experts disagree as to whether lithium-ion batteries can become much cheaper. Bloomberg analysts predict a reduction in lithium-ion battery prices by as much as 52 percent by 2030, while one BMW board member insists battery prices can’t fall far below where they are today, at $116 to $174 per kilowatt-hour of storage. Some companies are pouring money into solid-state battery development with the hope of readying the technology by 2025, while others believe lithium-sulfur batteries could serve as an intermediate solution between lithium-ion and solid-state batteries.

Investment into global energy storage is predicted to total $1.2 trillion by 2040. Of this, electric vehicle batteries will make up a significant portion—Volkswagen announced Monday that it has committed $56 billion to battery procurement.

Aaron Blum, Co-Founder, COO and Chief Compliance Officer of ERI, the largest fully integrated IT and electronics asset disposition provider and cybersecurity-focused hardware destruction company in the United States, stressed the urgency of responsibly managing lithium batteries at a public workshop meeting presented by the State of California’s CalRecycle.

The workshop, “Threats Posed by Lithium Battery Fires,” featured a roundtable of experts, including Blum, discussing the increased prevalence of battery related fires at waste management facilities, the impacts to recycling and material recovery facilities in California, and existing tools and potential solutions.

“It’s important to realize that lithium batteries are not going away,” said Blum. “So they need to be at the top of all discussions in this industry with regard to best practices on handling them through the entire supply chain. I’m glad CalRecycle and the State of California in general are engaging in this important and educational dialogue.”

ERI is the largest fully integrated IT and electronics asset disposition provider and cybersecurity-focused hardware destruction company in the United States. ERI is to de-manufacture, recycle, and refurbish every type of electronic device in an environmentally responsible manner. ERI has the capacity to process more than a billion pounds of electronic waste annually at its eight certified locations, serving every zip code in the United States. ERI’s mission is to safeguard organizations, people and the environment. For more information about e-waste recycling and ERI, call 1-800-ERI-DIRECT or visit .

At this year’s Cathodes conference in Newport Beach, the Investing News Network had the chance to catch up with Robert Mintak, CEO of Standard Lithium.

Standard Lithium is focused on advancing projects where production can be brought online quickly. The company’s flagship Smackover project is in a region of southern Arkansas that is home to North America’s largest brine production and processing facilities.

Speaking about the state of the lithium market this year, Mintak said 2017 had ended strong for the space.

“Looking back, we should have seen that a correction was due, however the reports published by some of the banks [earlier this year] were some of the catalysts for that, which was unexpected,” he added.

For Standard Lithium, Mintak added, “we were extremely fortunate that we closed our financing very early in 2018, which allowed us not to fixate in having to raise capital.”

Speaking about the most challenging aspect of the lithium space this year, Mintak said it was the constant need to defend the rationale of why bringing a lithium project online is important.

Mintak also talked about new battery technologies, saying that he expects lithium-ion batteries will remain key for the next decade.

“There will be advances, there will be evolution or a march to solid-state, but all of that requires lithium,” he said, adding that the key as a developer was to future-proof production.

Listen to the interview above for more insight from Mintak, who also talks about Standard Lithium’s milestones this year and what’s ahead for the company. You can also click here to listen to our full Cathodes interviews playlist on YouTube.

With renewables and clean sources forming a vital part of the global energy mix, lithium-ion battery market has emerged as quite a game changer in the overall energy cosmos.

Touted as the single most important component in the portable electronics revolution, lithium-ion batteries in the past few decades have paved the way for innovations such as mobiles & smartphones.

In fact, it has been reported that there are more mobile handsets powered by rechargeable lithium-ion batteries than there are people, which in turn is favorably impacting the rapid commercialization of this business sphere. Signifying the robust growth potential, the global lithium-ion battery market in 2017 gathered a remuneration of over $24 billion in 2017.

Electric vehicles to prominently drive lithium-ion battery adoption

Further registering exponential growth from the rising popularity of electronic products such as laptops, tablets, and smartwatches, lithium-ion battery market has been viewed to gain immense traction from the new wave of electric vehicles.

With more EVs expected to hit the roads by 2040 than the fossil fuel ones, the electric vehicles trend has been the newest catalyst proliferating the commercialization matrix of lithium-ion battery market at an unprecedented rate in the recent years.

With such a vast and complex value chain, it is quite overt that lithium-ion batteries themselves are not new and have been mass produced since the early 90’s. However, within the realm of battery cells, the EV application has led this industry to evolve into a standalone sector with tremendous growth potential.

Estimates claim that, with more than 550,000 EVs being sold across the globe in 2015, electric car registrations witnessed a remarkable 70% surge from the previous year’s registrations. Recently in 2017, the global sales climbed further to 54%, in turn helping EVs in remaining on track to reach the SDS target.

The International Energy Agency further forecasts the number of EVs to hit 125 million by 2030, claiming that government policies will continue to remain as the linchpin for their remarkable adoption.

The aforementioned data significantly goes on to validate that lithium-ion batteries are here to be the technology of choice in the ensuing years as well. A report compiled by Global Market Insights, Inc., further throws light on the same and claims the global lithium-ion battery market to be a whopping 60-billion-dollar business in the coming six years.

China to exhibit robust growth potential in the regional spectrum of lithium ion battery market

Outperforming the US in 2016, China emerged as the largest electric car market by far, housing 40% of the global EVs and more than double that of in the United States. To be precise, according to the reports published by the EIA, China accounted for EV sales over 336,000 in 2016, while the US was pegged at over 159,000.

Given the positive outlook, it goes without saying that the current lithium-ion battery market uptake in China, is largely influenced by the growing adoption of consumer electronics, EVs and supportive governmental policies. The US meanwhile, remains at the regional forefront, and accounted for more than 80% of the North America llithium-ion battery industry share in 2016.

China’s contribution to the lithium ion battery market can also be attributed to the government’s efforts to reduce pollution from battery waste. In 2016 for instance, the Government of China introduced a spate of regulations to eliminate poisoning from the lead disposal industry.

Japan is emerging as another prominent growth ground for potential investors, on account of the positive outlook towards the electrification trend in the automotive sector and robust smart & portable devices demand. If reports are to be believed, Japan in the year 2016 accounted for more than 13 gigawatts of automotive lithium ion cell manufacturing capacity – representing a colossal upsurge of 237% from the 2014 level.

Governmental actions in limiting GHG emissions and utilisation of renewable energy sources are expected to further propel Japan lithium ion battery market share. Which for the record, registered a y-o-y growth of more than 8% over 2018-2024.

Speaking of the governmental regulations, it is imperative to mention that, the rapid demand and higher environmental and human cost of extracting lithium has given rise to recycling plant setups.

Recently for instance, SungEel MCC has unveiled its new lithium-ion battery recycling plant with a capacity to recycle over 5,000 tons of spent Li-ion batteries. The company claims that with the consumption of both lithium and cobalt outpacing the supplies in recent years, recycling these batteries will gain massive momentum.

With the already rising demand for smaller & lightweight batteries that charge in few minutes – or ever seconds, and those that won’t catch fire or explode, the global lithium-ion battery industry is likely to witness a notable surge in R&D actives and product innovation trends.

The competitive landscape of this business sphere is further expected to remain oligopolistic in nature with the dominant industry players going the whole hog to establish global presence. At present, Sociedad Química y Minera, Albemarle Corporation, Ganfeng Lithium, and Tianqi Lithium are the four companies dominating the global lithium supply.

With lithium-ion rechargeable batteries further powering the international space stations, submarines, and electric aircrafts, the global lithium-ion battery industry share is expected to expand considerably, with the robustly growing application spectrum.

Quite undeniably, these batteries have become essential for powering electric vehicles and for storing energy generated by the wind turbines and solar power, which is expected to upsurge the commercialization potential of global lithium-ion battery market by several notches in the ensuing years.

Rechargeable Li-ion batteries are crucial parts for home electronics and portable devices such as cell phones and laptops. One can imagine how the life we have today would be like without cell phones and internet. Li-ion batteries (LIBs) are also growing in popularity for electric vehicle which can help to highly reduce the emission of CO2 and solve the serious greenhouse effect on the earth. All these demands call for superior Li-ion battery materials with better performance such as higher capacity, longer life time, lower cost, etc.

Lithium titanium oxide (Li4Ti5O12, LTO) spinel experiences negligible volume change during lithium insertion and extraction and is regarded as a “zero-strain” anode material for LIBs. Due to its great structural stability, LTO exhibits excellent cycling performance, making it a promising anode for LIBs in electrical vehicle and large-scale energy storage areas. However, LTO shows poor electronic and ionic conductivities, limiting its applications. Therefore, improving its conductivity becomes crucial.

In a recent research article published in the Beijing-based National Science Review, scientists at the Center for High Pressure Science and Technology Advanced Research, Institute of Geochemistry, and Institute of Physics of Chinese Academy of Sciences, and George Mason University, Carnegie Institution of Washington, and Argonne National Laboratory of USA present their results on the studies of phase stability and conductivity of LTO under high pressure. It was found that the LTO spinel structure starts to distort due to the significant difference in compressibility of the building blocks, LiO6 and TiO6 octahedra in LTO at low pressures. The strong highly distorted structure transforms into amorphous eventually as pressure over around 270 thousands times normal atmospheric pressure. Remarkably, the amorphous LTO can be decompressed down to ambient pressure and displays much better conductivity than crystalline LTO. “These findings may offer a new strategy for improving the conductivity of LTO anode in Li-ion batteries using a high-pressure technique.” said Dr. Lin Wang, the corresponding author of the article.

To understand the significant enhancement of conductivity in the amorphous phase, the ionic transport properties of crystalline and amorphous LTO were investigated by first-principles molecular dynamics simulations. Theoretical calculations revealed that the amorphous phase induced by high pressure can highly promote Li+ diffusion and increase its ionic conductivity by providing ion migration defects. “All of these findings increase the understanding of the relationship between structure and conducting properties of LTO” Dr. Wang added.