LITHIUM ION BATTERIES

Lithium ion batteries are commonly used for portable electronics and electric vehicles . A prototype of batteries was developed by Akira yoshino in 1985 .

Later a commercial Li-ion battery was developed by Sony and Asahi kasei team led by yoshio nishi in 1991.

Working of a lithium ion battery is very basic. Li- ion moves from the negative electrode to the positive electrode through an electrolyte during discharge and back when charging.

These batteries used intercalated lithium compound as the material at the positive electrode and graphite at the negative electrode.

These batteries are preferable because of their high energy density, no memory effect and low self-discharge.

LITHIUM MANGANESE OXIDE  

The lithium manganese oxide or LiMn2O4 or Li- manganese.

This is a lithium cell that uses manganese dioxide as the cathode material.

Its because manganese oxide components are abundant, inexpensive , non-toxic and provide better thermal stability.

LITHIUM COBALT OXIDE

Lithium Cobalt oxide is a dark bluish grey crystalline solid and is commonly used in the positive electrodes of lithium batteries.

it is very harmful to be use.

That is because this battery goes under a high exothermic reaction which can spread to its adjacent cell or ignite the nearby combustible materials .

LITHIUM NICKLE MANGANESE COBALT OXIDE

You must be wondering who placed all these random elements in a statement. But apparently the battery is made up of all these materials.   

It can also be written as NMC.

 it’s composition is the oxides of lithium, nickel, manganese and Cobalt.

Nowadays NMCs is among the most important storage material in lithium  batteries they are used  on the positive pole which acts as the cathode during discharge.

These batteries are installed in some popular luxury cars like, BMW ActiveE in 2001 and  BMW i8 in 2013, as of 2020 the list gets bigger- Audi e-tron GE,BMW i3,Chevrolet Bolt and many.

LITHIUM NICKLE COBALT ALUMINIUM OXIDE 

it’s also called as NCR

It is very similar to NMC but manganese swapped its place with aluminium in the cathode.

This swapping of aluminium helps NCA cells achieve the highest capacity of all lithium battery chemistry.

But on the other hand , the downside is : a slight decrease in the life-cycle and power as compared to other chemistry .

Now you must be wondering why to use NCA over NMC??

it’s because NCA enables battery with high energy density and is also supports excellent fast charging.

Example of an NCA cell is  Panasonic NCR 18650B which was used for most of all Tesla’s early electric vehicles.

 you know the cell is good when Tesla started using it.

Few more advantages of this cell is in packing  the most energy into the smallest space with large enough  battery and its lower relative power can be mitigated too. After observing  all these advantages we can say that  NCA is quite a competition to  NMC.

Lithium iron phosphate battery

The lithium iron phosphate battery is a kind of lithium-ion battery. It uses LiFePo4 as the cathode material, and metallic backed graphite carbon as anode.

These LFP batteries are made with natural materials which are non-toxic and abundant in nature. LiFePO4 can be applicable in various places like vehicle use, utility scale stationary applications, and backup power.

There are two big advantages for using LiFePO4 -one is cycle life and  the second is safety.

LiFePO4 have the longest rated cycle life of all commonly available lithium battery cells.

They are often rated for over 2,000 cycles. They are also the safest lithium battery chemistry available.

While fires from LiFePO4 cells have been documented, they are incredibly rare.

The electrolyte used in LiFePO4 cells simply can’t oxidize quickly enough to combust efficiently and requires exceedingly high temperatures for thermal runaway, often higher than the combustion temperature of many materials.

 LiFePO4 cells have a nominal voltage of 3.2 V per cell and a discharge-charge voltage range of 2.5 V – 3.65 V.