In Japan, the development of new generation battery materials is heating up.

Editor’s note: This article is from the WeChat official account “Nikkei Chinese Net” (ID: rijingzhongwenwang), author : Mei Guodian.

In Japan, the development of new generation battery materials is heating up. The promoters are start-ups and SMEs. Some companies produce unexpected materials, while others entrust other companies and contacts to actively promote mass production. The material influences the capacity and safety of the battery. If the research and development activities of battery materials as the core of competition become active, the popularization of new generation batteries may accelerate. Nihon Keizai Shimbun visited the front line of research and development of battery materials in Japan.

Centered on Enpower Japan, a start-up company from Tokyo Institute of Technology, about 10 Japanese materials and equipment companies have gathered from 2018 to 2020. Everyone took a fancy to the electrolyte of the all-solid-state lithium-ion battery owned by Enpower.

Expansion of the all-solid-state battery market

Current lithium batteries realize charge and discharge through the movement of lithium ions in the electrolyte between the positive electrode and the negative electrode. The all-solid-state battery uses solid electrolyte instead of electrolyte. The risk of explosion is small, and the power capacity is larger, so it is regarded as a strong candidate for a new generation of batteries.

According to the statistics of Japan’s Fuji Economy, the global market size of all-solid-state batteries is expected to reach approximately 2.7 trillion yen by 2035, which will increase to approximately 1,000 times that of 2018. Toyota, Hitachi Zosen and others are promoting practical use.

However, all solid-state batteries use solid electrolytes. Compared with electrolytes, ions are not easy to move, and charging and discharging require a longer time. In addition, the inability to use at low temperatures becomes a major weakness. In order to overcome the difficulties, Enpower made full use of the sulfide with a special crystal structure developed by Professor Sugano Kazuji of Tokyo Institute of Technology and others. The mobility of ions is increased to more than 10 times that of ordinary solid electrolytes, which exceeds the level of electrolytes.

The company was born in Tokyo Institute of Technology and used to be Aisin Seiki battery researcher President Che Yong, President Dai Xiang and others were founded in 2018. In fact, Dai Xiang studied at the University of Texas in the United States, under the tutelage of Professor John Goodenough. Speaking of John Goodenough Professor Naf, together with Akira Yoshino, an honorary researcher of Asahi Kasei, won the Nobel Prize for lithium battery development in 2019 and is an authority in the battery field.

Dai Xiang and Gudinaf jointly studied electrolytes using oxides. Combined with the patented technology of Tokyo Institute of Technology, it is planned to start production of electrolytes for all-solid-state batteries by 2021. Che Yong said that Japan has advantages in the field of high-performance battery materials on a global scale and is very suitable for research and development here.

For all-solid-state battery materials, large Japanese companies are also actively promoting development. Idemitsu Kosan is using hydrogen sulfide, a by-product of petroleum refining, to develop an all-solid-state battery electrolyte using sulfide. At present, we are tackling the problem of harmful gas generated by water and plan to start mass production in the first half of 2020.

In addition to all-solid-state batteries, new-generation battery materials using liquid electrolytes are also emerging as emerging companies. iElectrolyte has developed an adhesive coated on the positive and negative electrode substrates, using the mucilage component of kelp.

A high-density coating of nickel and other materials on the aluminum foil of the electrode substrate with a binder will increase the amount of ions and the capacity of the battery. What is this high-density coated material? During the development of planetary probes and rocket batteries, iElectrolyte discovered that adding “alginic acid”, the mucus component of kelp, to the electrolyte can increase the current.

iElectrolyte’s CEO (CEO) Masaji Ishikawa intuitively believes that this material can be used for adhesives. Materials such as nickel can be dispersed on the electrode substrate and can be coated very thickly. After repeated tests, it is confirmed that the battery performance is improved.

Environmental protection policy becomes Dongfeng

Kelp also gave birth to other new technologies. Analysts in the battery industry pointed out that “Europe is strengthening environmental protection policies for battery factories.” The binder for high-capacity electrodes mainly uses organic solvents, which has a huge negative impact on the environment. iElectrolyte’s adhesive uses water, which has a low environmental impact. Moreover, kelp is an inedible thing that is treated as garbage in South American waters. It is useless things that are creating value.

stickyMixture is the dominant area of ​​Japanese companies. KUREHA Company (KUREHA)He Rui Weng Company (Zeon) is in the field of positive and negative adhesives respectively It accounts for nearly 50% of the global share, but iElectrolyte will challenge this area.

LE System strives to mass-produce electrolytes for “redox flow batteries”. This battery circulates the electrolyte in the tank through a pump. Electrodes are used to initiate chemical reactions to achieve charge and discharge. The same weight can store less electricity than a lithium battery, but the product has a lifespan of up to 20 years and there is no risk of explosion.

Redox flow battery is a technology that was commercialized 5 years ago, but it is not popular at present. The reason is the price. The electrolyte uses rare metal vanadium, which accounts for 30 to 40% of the production and installation costs. However, LE System has opened up a new path. The breakthrough is the useless material of petroleum coke ash used for thermal power generation.

The company successfully extracted vanadium mixed with sulfur and carbon from waste petroleum coke ash. Procurement costs can be reduced by 50 to 60%. A factory is currently being constructed in Fukushima Prefecture, and production will start in 2021. It is planned to supply batteries for solar and wind power generation to domestic and foreign battery companies.

The main competitor is Sumitomo Electric Industries, which has mass-produced redox flow batteries for the first time. The company intends to popularize redox flow batteries by replacing vanadium with titanium and manganese.

Statistics from the Yano Institute of Economic Research in Japan show that the global market size of the main components of lithium batteries exceeded 2 trillion yen in 2018. China holds more than half of the shares in terms of quantity, and Japanese and South Korean companies have also joined the competition. Japan’s Sumitomo Metal Mine is in the field of cathode materials, and Mitsubishi Chemical has a place in the global market in the field of electrolytes, supporting Japanese battery companies.

Start-ups have technical strength, but the subject is mass production. A huge investment in equipment and personnel is also needed, and a stable investor needs to be found. Investors are paying attention to the operating conditions of these start-ups after technology.

Never give up on “excessive technology”

In the battery field, the redox flow battery has been regarded as an “excessive technology” for many years and has been met with cold shoulder. dayThis Sumitomo Electric Industry lasted more than 30 years and finally commercialized it around 2015. However, the research and development process was once shelved and the technicians regretted it.

“If you can re-If you make a new choice, I will not do this again”, Japan LE System In the redox flow battery electrolyte business, President Junichi Sato described his hard work. President Sato once served as an environmental consultant. He found that with the popularization of photovoltaic power generation, the market for large-scale storage batteries would expand, so he founded LE System in 2011. But the people around are not optimistic and think this is “outdated technology.”

In spite of this, Sato, who has “no retreat”, kept visiting financial institutions, etc., introducing business development prospects over and over again. As a result of establishing the technology to break the bottleneck of high prices, Japan’s government-private fund INCJ (formerly the Japan Industrial Innovation Agency) and Nishimatsu Construction finally agreed to invest, and this has led to the construction of factories.

Redox flow battery using LE System electrolyte

In the technological competition for next-generation batteries, Japan has many fields ahead of overseas, but if you turn your attention to the current lithium-ion battery materials, you will find that it is being surpassed by Chinese and Korean companies. A representative example is the diaphragm field. In 2019, Shanghai Enjie’s market share surpassed Japan’s Asahi Kasei and became the world’s largest. The chief researcher Tang Jin of Mizuho Bank analyzed that there are few Japanese battery manufacturers increasing production, and Japanese companies are at a disadvantage in the share competition.

If you want to discover potential materials as soon as possible and put them into mass production, so as to regain market share, the key is time. Material informatics (MI), which uses artificial intelligence (AI) to find new materials, seems to be competingThe trump card of time.

Mitsubishi Chemicals and Panasonic and other large companies are widely introducing materials informatics, and long-established chemical manufacturers that have been in business for nearly a century are also beginning to use it. That is Kishida Chemical, which operates experimental reagents. The company cooperates with MI-6, which develops materials informatics software, to explore revolutionary materials for electrolytes.

Material informatics is based on papers and experimental data, and AI screens out candidate materials that researchers need. This saves researchers the time to screen materials by consulting papers, etc., and is expected to shorten development time.

Kishida Chemical combined materials discovered using material informatics to develop an electrolyte that suppresses fire. In 2018, it started production for notebook computers. The organic solvent uses “Propyl Acetate”, even if it is mixed with a flame retardant, the stored and released power and life can be maintained at the same level as ordinary electrolyte. In the future, it is also considering the development of new-generation battery electrolytes such as sodium ion batteries.

Tetsuya Takeshi, the director of the company’s Tokushima plant in charge of battery materials business, introduced materials informatics in 2017 with the idea of ​​”hoping to obtain a perspective different from the original accumulated data.” Takeshi said, “Materials informatics has directed its attention to unobtrusive candidate materials (such as propyl acetate),” and it feels very effective. In the past, I always refer to the latest papers, “often only focusing on candidate materials that are in line with popular trends.”

However, “development time has not been shortened” at present, and efficiency improvements are still being explored. The reason is that the current materials informatics system gives as many as 300 to 400 candidates, which are in the stage of verification by researchers. In the future, with the continuous improvement of analysis accuracy, in addition to the combination of materials, we will explore the mixing ratio and strive to improve development efficiency. For material manufacturers, applied material informatics may become the lifeline of the future.