Development Trend of Anode Material Industry
From the technical aspect, the specific capacity performance of graphite anode material gradually tends to the theoretical value, such as the theoretical gram capacity of graphite is 372mAh/g, some manufacturers can reach 365mAh/g, basically reach the limit. In order to improve the energy density of lithium batteries, new anode materials are being actively developed. At present, the research and development of silicon carbon anode material has made rapid progress, and the material has been used in batches in Japan. Only a few domestic enterprises have achieved small batch production, and most of them are still in the pilot test or laboratory stage. In the next few years, the anode material industry will show the following development trends:
(1) Artificial graphite has become one of the main growth points. In the next few years, the new energy vehicle market will maintain a high growth trend under the support of the policy, artificial graphite will also be driven by the demand for power lithium, maintain a high growth rate, will become one of the main growth points of negative electrode materials in the future.
(2) Low-end repetitive capacity will be eliminated. Anode materials in the future enterprise product type switch to power market, a large part of the mainstream enterprise with the economies of scale and technological advantages, its market share will increase further, squeezed the market space, small business enterprise in the field of low-end positioning and the lack of core technology enterprises will face the risk on the acquisition or collapse.
(3) The industrialization process of silicon carbon negative electrode is accelerated. In the future, with the increase of energy density requirements of power batteries, the system of silicon carbon anode with high nickel ternary materials will become a development trend. In the next two years, with the technology of high-nickel ternary materials NCM811, NCA and other supporting materials gradually mature, the industrialization of silicon carbon anode is coming.
(4) The negative material is facing the pressure of cost reduction, and the natural graphite negative material has the competitive advantage of cost. With the decline of new energy vehicle subsidies, power lithium electric suppliers are facing pressure from downstream automakers to further reduce prices. Natural graphite anode materials will be more widely used in power lithium batteries of extended range electric vehicles due to the price advantage of raw materials and lithium iron phosphate anode materials. In addition, with the widespread application of energy storage in the scale of power system, lithium batteries with natural graphite anode materials and lithium iron phosphate anode materials will be more widely used due to their high cost performance advantages.