Are all Li-ion batteries manganese now? I notice Panasonic and Wisper make a point of mentioning it on their labeling whereas my Phylion doesn't (Neither does my Alien), nor on their website. I read somewhere that is was discovered adding Maganese to the positive electrode increased capacity.
Terry
I was looking at batteries again as I get confoosed!I read some where that flecc says Wisper use Nickel Manganese Cobalt,but on their site they refer to them as Li-Po?Is this the same?Also in theory are LiFePO4 batteries better than these?
It's all very confusing due to the abbreviated way batteries are referred to by the suppliers, none of the references complete and accurate.
The Lithium refers to the basic material and ion to the electricity handling method, and these are all lithium-ion
Terms like cobalt, manganese etc refer to the cathode material used, while polymer refers to a type of cell construction that avoids rigid plates.
Therefore a battery can be lithium-ion manganese polymer, each word referring to something different and not contradictory. Of course mouthfuls like this are too cumbersome, so the battery and bike manufacturers use the minimal combination they think most attractive in sales terms. li-polymer generally the current favourite.
Now the background. Originally lithium ion battery cells used rigid plates with a cobalt cathode and these performed really well for current delivery, but with time it was realised that slight manufacturing faults could cause fires to occur, and you may have seen or read of the sudden laptop fires that occurred. These also affected many e-bikes and in at least one case someone's house was burnt down as a result. Clearly something had to be done rapidly about the cobalt cathode which was the source of the trouble although not the direct cause.
There's about a dozen elements which are suitable for this cathode use in ascending order of suitability, with cobalt fairly high up the range, but the only suitable alternative which could be used with the technical knowledge available at the time was manganese which was very safe. Unfortunately it was lower down the range of suitability and couldn't deliver current as well, and led the well known battery failures on the more powerful bikes,
With time the chemistry and construction was improved, making them mostly just about good enough, but clearly more was needed, so some complex cathodes were created, basically a compound blend of the former cobalt with manganese and additional elements which was both safe and better at delivering current, and these are the expensive top grade cells of today that you see in batteries used by Wisper, eZee, Panasonic, BionX etc.
The polymer construction came in parallel with the developments in chemistry, and it's basically a particulate way of constructing the contents that allows soft cell casings and almost any shape of cell to be constructed. The attraction for e-bikes is that these are very much lighter than the former plate cells with rigid cases, which were often made of welded steel.
So going back to the terminology, we can now have this sort of battery:
Lithium-ion nickel manganese cobalt complex oxide powder polymer
with even more complex ones appearing, so I bet you're now pleased the manufacturers do abbreviate!
The latest development of LiFePO
4 has the name lithium iron phosphate, note the word "iron" not ion, though these are also ion batteries. Iron is right at the top of suitable cathode materials, but for years it proved very difficult to find a way of using it. That's now been cracked with iron phosphate. Because iron is so suitable these promise to eventually be lifetime batteries, and they will already accept between 1000 and 3000 charges depending on the rates of discharge, in turn depending on the power of the motor used.
As yet the mass production of acceptably priced versions of these for our continuous high discharge use on powerful e-bikes has not been reliable enough, though they are used successfully in more intermittent applications like power tools. They should arrive for us eventually.
For the future there's developments of the anode material in hand. At present they all use carbon anodes which perform well so have not had much attention, but these will be improved upon. And of course there's always the possibility of a completely new type of battery appearing, though none of the other current advanced types are suitable for e-bike use.
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