NEC develops long-life manganese lithium-ion battery

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NEC Corp said Wednesday it has developed a next generation manganese lithium-ion battery prototype featuring cathodes that support high voltage operations and an electrolyte solution that improves the stability of high voltage operations. These developments are expected to help increase the range of electric vehicles in the future while reducing the weight of batteries.

NEC currently develops and produces lithium-ion batteries with cathodes made with manganese, an inexpensive and abundant resource. These technologies are used in large capacity storage batteries for electric vehicles as well as residential use. However, improving a battery’s capacity per weight (energy density) has been a challenging issue for further development. In order to solve this issue, NEC introduced higher voltage to batteries and made progress in the development of an electrolyte solution that suppresses the oxidative decomposition of the electrolyte solution that is generated on the surface of cathodes from the higher voltage.

This new cathode and electrolyte solution improve battery energy density by approximately 30%, increase battery capacity and decrease battery weight, all while maintaining a high level of safety. “These developments can contribute to increasing the driving range of electric vehicles, enabling the production of light weight storage systems and simplifying the management of battery systems by decreasing the number of cells,” said Hidenori Shimawaki, General Manager, Smart Energy Research Laboratories, NEC Corporation. “Furthermore, these new batteries provide high voltage drive and the same long operating life as conventional 4V lithium-ion batteries.”