Power Battery upgrade: the first stirring semi-solid Technology of mixed Lithium Metal Battery is heating up again

Following the listing of LG new energy, the emergence of SES AI Corporation (, "the first stock of mixed lithium metal batteries in the world" hereinafter referred to as: SES), makes the war in the power battery industry escalate again.

Recently, following the successful completion of the business merger with Ivanhoe Capital acquisition, SES, a developer and manufacturer of lithium metal batteries, announced that its Class A common shares and warrants began trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbols "SES" and "SES WS", respectively.

Behind the list of investors: the figure of many giants in the industrial chain

According to the prospectus, SES brought in a number of investors before it went public.

Specifically, in the SES investor list, financial investment institutions include: Xiangfeng Investment, Xiangfeng Investment parent company Temasek; car manufacturers include: Geely Holdings Group, General Motors, Honda Motor, Hyundai, Kia, SAIC Group, Foxconn, etc.; at the same time, it also includes SK Group, Tianqi Lithium Industry and other industrial capital.

On Feb. 7, Tianqi Lithium Industry announced that as of now, the company holds 27.7679 million shares in SES. The merger of SES and Ivanhoe in the business field will create better conditions for its implementation of longer-term strategic planning in the future, thus further accelerating the commercialization of lithium metal batteries.

Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily learned from SES that so far, the company has signed agreements with GM, Honda, Hyundai and Kia for the joint development of lithium metal battery A samples.

Earlier, in November 2021, SES released the Apollo lithium metal battery with a capacity of 107Ah. At the same time, the company announced that it is building a lithium-metal battery super factory in Jiading, Shanghai, with a total area of 30, 000 square meters, which is scheduled to be completed in 2023 with a production capacity of 1GWh.

A reporter from Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily learned that SES is expected to achieve mass production by 2025. According to the prospectus, SES will start pre-production from 2022 to 2023; enter the trial production phase in 2024 with a capacity of 1GWh/ year; and in 2025, SES mixed metal lithium battery will complete the C-round verification and enter the formal mass production stage, which will reach 11GWh/ year.

Mixed Lithium Metal Battery: another rival of Ning Wang?

At the 10th Global New Energy Automobile Conference, Xiang Yanhuo, president of passenger vehicle Solutions in Ningde era, once said, "after nearly 10 years of research, we believe that all-solid-state metal batteries using lithium metal as negative materials are the best development direction of solid-state batteries. This technology can essentially improve the safety and high energy density of batteries, but there are still some key technologies and process problems that need to be tackled by the industry. "

Hu Qichao, founder and CEO of SES, told Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily that at present, solid-state batteries are mainly divided into two types: solid-state lithium-ion batteries and solid-state lithium-metal batteries. "Hybrid lithium-metal batteries are between lithium-ion batteries and solid-state lithium-metal batteries, taking into account the advantages of both."

The biggest difference between hybrid lithium metal battery and lithium ion battery lies in the negative electrode material. Among them, the negative electrode of lithium-ion battery is mainly graphite and silicon, while the negative electrode of lithium-metal battery is lithium metal.

Hu Qichao, founder and CEO of SES, told Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily that "in hybrid lithium-metal batteries, the negative electrode has been replaced by ultra-wide and ultra-thin lithium metal from the graphite of traditional ternary lithium batteries, which makes hybrid lithium-metal batteries have the characteristics of solid-state batteries with higher energy density, lighter weight and safer."

According to reports, SES lithium metal battery uses high energy density lithium metal anode, protective anode coating, patented high concentration lithium salt electrolyte and so on.

Soochow Securities research shows that the production process of SES battery is more than 60% similar to that of lithium-ion battery, and the material difference lies in electrolyte and negative electrode. More than 60% of the production process of hybrid lithium-metal batteries is the same as that of lithium-ion batteries. From the point of view of the material system, the difference between the two lies in the electrolyte and lithium metal negative electrode, the electrolyte uses a high concentration of solvent salt electrolyte, the efficiency is improved from 5% to more than 95%, and other materials are the same as lithium-ion batteries.

Citic Construction Investment Research said that SES's Apollo lithium metal battery uses a composite polymer coating, but it is not an all-solid-state battery and does not affect the use of the diaphragm. There are many difficulties in mass production of all-solid-state batteries, and there are still many problems to be solved, such as interface conductivity, battery consistency and so on.

According to Cao Guangping, an independent researcher of New Energy and Intelligent Network Automotive, "mixed lithium metal batteries belong to mixed solid-state lithium-ion batteries. This kind of battery with high energy density is a development trend, especially as a power battery, it is very light in weight and is easily accepted by the electric vehicle industry."

However, "the direction of lithium metal battery technology is not new, and related research is being carried out at home and abroad." But at present, domestic enterprises may not have made significant progress. " A senior industry analyst told Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily.

In response, Hu Qichao, founder and CEO of SES, told Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily: "from a production point of view, there is more than 60% overlap between lithium metal batteries and lithium-ion batteries." However, in the research and development of anode materials, very few enterprises in the world are able to mass produce ultra-thin and ultra-wide lithium metal materials. In addition, there are a series of details that need to be improved, such as from quality control to production process management. " And this has also become a difficult problem that the whole industry is facing at present.

Power Battery upgrade: semi-solid Battery is expected to accelerate loading

Oriental Fortune Securities research believes that all-solid-state batteries are currently in the state of laboratory research, and mass production and commercialization still face many problems. Semi-solid battery is a transition scheme to solid-state battery, the battery capacity density is greatly improved, it can be compatible with the existing process equipment and materials of electrolyte battery, and achieve low-cost mass production, which is one of the current research directions, and it is possible to land quickly.

In addition to SES, many enterprises frequently act on semi-solid batteries and reveal relevant plans. Taken together, semi-solid batteries are expected to accelerate loading in 2022.

Among them, on January 22, the first batch of Dongfeng E70 equipped with Ganfeng mixed solid-liquid lithium-ion batteries was delivered in Xinyu, Jiangxi Province; on December 10, 2021, it held a commissioning ceremony in Xinyu, Jiangxi Province.

On January 14, Funeng Technology said on the investor interactive platform that the company's semi-solid battery samples had received good feedback to the customers of the whole car factory. The products produced by Zhenjiang factory are mainly supplied to Mercedes-Benz, and the first-phase production line can be applied to the production of future 330Wh/Kg products after slight adjustment. In addition, it said it would build a similar 285Wh/Kg production line in the future, reducing the time from the beginning of capacity climbing to the target by at least 30 per cent.

"We are promoting the research and development and engineering of solid-liquid hybrid batteries with higher energy density as planned, and batch verification is expected to be provided to customers in the second half of 2022," Li Yongwei, deputy general manager of Beijing Weilan New Energy Technology Co., Ltd., said in an interview with the media. "

Li Yan, chairman of Guoxuan Hi-Tech, said in November that "the company provides semi-solid batteries for domestic high-end pure electric batteries with ultra-1000km mileage, which is twice as long as its first-generation models."

According to Ouyang Minggao, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, professor of Tsinghua University, and director of the State key Laboratory of Automobile Safety and Energy Saving, "it will take about a decade for all-solid-state batteries to industrialize and have an important impact on the market pattern." Existing lithium technologies, including liquid and semi-solid batteries, will remain absolutely dominant until 2030. "