PUBLISHER: SNE Research | PRODUCT CODE: 1165588
PUBLISHER: SNE Research | PRODUCT CODE: 1165588
Recently, the secondary battery market has been expanding from small IT application market to ESS and EV market, and accordingly demand for cathode materials in the secondary battery market is also expected to increase.
Lithium-ion secondary batteries were invented by Akira Yoshino of Japan around 1985 and were commercialized by Sony in 1991.The cathode materials used by Sony at that time is lithium cobalt oxide (LiCoO2) (thereinafter, abbreviated as LCO). LCO as a cathode material in lithium-ion secondary batteries has nominal voltage of 3.7V. It is easily synthesized as a material in which lithium is intercalated and deintercalated. And it has relatively good life characteristics.So it is still widely used. However, problems of the LCO have begun to emerge. There are two major problems. LCO is very expensive due to Co, the major component of LCO, of which reserves are limited. Another problem is the performance of the material. At the ending period of charging, the battery capacity reaches max 150mAh/g, which is only about half the theoretical capacity due to LCO's structural instability. For these reasons, it is difficult and disadvantageous to use LCO cathode material in large-size batteries for automobiles and power storage.
Accordingly, the cathode material that has improved these problems is lithium nickel cobalt aluminum oxide (LiNi0.8Co0.15Al0.05O2; thereinafter, referred to as NCA). And the newly developed cathode material is lithium nickel cobalt manganese oxide (LiNi1/3Co1/3Mn1/3O2; thereinafter, referred to as NCM). 3M invented it and holds the NCM111 patent. LG Chem also developed LiNi0.5Co0.2Mn0.3O2 (NCM 523) material in which the composition of NCM is partly adjusted. Recently, high Ni based cathode materials such as NCM622, NCM811, etc. have been studied widely.
There is also lithium manganese oxide (LiMn2O4; hereinafter referred to as LMO) that has spinel structure. Its capacity is 100mAh/g, which is lower than LCO, but it has good output characteristics and excellent safety. Moreover it is being applied to low-end products by taking advantage of its low price or it is partially blended into cathode materials for electric vehicles.
Finally, there is lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4; hereinafter referred to as FPO) with olivine structure. It has high structural stability but it has relatively low discharge voltage of about 3.5V. So, high-voltage olivine cathode material in which Fe is replaced with Mn or Ni is being widely studied.
Among the four major components (cathode, anode, electrolyte, and separator) of lithium-ion secondary batteries, cathode materials making up cathode account for about 30-40% of the total cost of lithium-ion secondary battery. Since the cost is considered the most important factor to commercialize large-sized lithium-ion secondary batteries, it is essential to improve the performance of cathode material and lower the price at the same time.
In 2022, 1,522,270 tons of cathode materials in total for LIBs were used globally. Chinese companies sold 911,010 tons of cathode materials taking up 59.8%, Korean companies sold 480,730 tons with 31.6% and Japanese companies sold 123,470 tons with 8.1%. In terms of cathode material type, NCM was sold the most with 44.9% 683,760 tons, followed by LFP with 30.6% 466,430 tons, NCA with 10.6% 160,910 tons, LCO with 8.5% 130,140 tons, and LMO with 5.3%, 81.030 tons.
According to the global shipment of lithium secondary battery cathode materials in 2022, the ranking in ternary cathode material shipment is in the order of Ecopro(Korea), Umicore(China), XTC(China), LGC(Korea), Ronbay(China), SMM(Japan), Nichia(Japan), L&F(Korea), Shan Shan(China), and CyLiCo(China).
China is showing dominance in LFP cathode material. The ranking is in the order of Hunan Yuneng (China), Dynanonic (China), Guoxuan (China), BTR (China), Lopal (China), Pulead (China), Wanrun (China), Anda (China), and Terui (China).
In the top 10 are three Korean companies including Umicore, two Japanese companies and five Chinese companies. And most of the companies in the top 20 are Chinese and they show remarkable growth.
As such, Korea, China and Japan are leading the global cathode material market. Chinese companies have emerged as dominating suppliers by increasing supply with the growth of Chinese major battery makers based on the domestic market. And Japanese companies are responding with advanced precursor technology to China's aggressive expansion. Korean cathode material companies are in a situation where they have to face price competition with Chinese companies and fiercely compete with Japanese companies for anode material and precursor technology.
In the future, the cathode material market is expected to experience fierce competition among the material companies in Korea, China and Japan along with massive growth of LIB in the global electric vehicle market.
This report describes the technology trend of various types of cathode material, especially the latest cathode material technology development trend based on Ni-rich NCM, cobalt-free cathode material technology, and single-particle cathode material technology development trend. It also covered precursors that are part of anode materials and mineral market. The number of cathode material companies that this report surveyed are 9 in Korea, 5 in Japan, and 15 in China.
This report analyzes the market trend from aspects of both demand and supply and analyzes supply chain in the industry by country, by company, and by cathode material type during the past five years. It also presents the market outlook and the price outlook for different types of cathode materials till 2030 with background of IT, xEV, and ESS market.