(If you would rather listen than read, just click play above.)Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Battery Week! We’ve talked about why lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) are so important and we went through a basic primer on how they work. Today, we’re going to get into the competition within the broad lithium battery family, among all the different kinds of batteries that use lithium and exchange charged lithium ions. (See the previous post for a full list.)There are a few clear leaders — lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide (NMC), lithium nickel cobalt aluminum (NCA), and lithium ferro phosphate (LFP) — that have achieved mass market scale and several others looking to get in on the action. The market prize is likely to exceed a trillion dollars within the next decade, so if any of these competitors can even carve out a substantial niche, it could be worth billions. Let’s look at the players. Better NMC and NCAThe bulk of LIB research these days is going to improve the dominant batteries on the market, mainly by reducing the amount of cobalt (the most toxic and expensive ingredient). Most EV makers use NMC batteries; Tesla uses NCA. In the past, it’s been difficult to push down the amount of cobalt in these batteries (it plays an important balancing role), but manufacturer LG recently introduced an NMC 811 battery: 80 percent nickel, 10 percent manganese, 10 percent cobalt. GM will use them in its new line, including in the Hummer, and Tesla will put them in some of its Model 3s in China.Most big battery manufacturers, including Panasonic (which supplies many of Tesla's batteries), have vowed to gradually reduce and eventually eliminate cobalt. Nickel is the key to energy density. Tesla, VW, and others are working on special high-nickel battery varieties that will be used for specialty vehicles that require extra-high energy density, like larger SUVs and trucks.But not every vehicle needs that, and nickel supply constraints are looming, so work is also being done to further boost manganese — a much more stable, abundant material — and reduce cobalt.Silicon anodesMany LIB developers are experimenting with silicon as an anode coating, partially or completely replacing graphite. Tesla has been working to increase the proportion of silicon in its anode since at least 2015.Silicon holds on to nine times more lithium ions than graphite, so energy density improves (range expands by 20 percent), and a silicon battery can charge and discharge much more quickly than graphite batteries, so power density improves as well. But silicon expands when it absorbs ions, so it breaks down quickly; cycle life is still much lower than graphite. If engineers can overcome that problem (and Tesla has vowed it can), LIBs could take a leap forward soon. SILA Nanotechnologies, in its brief on the future of LIBs, considers silicon anodes the biggest potential near-term market-shifting breakthrough in the space. It summarizes:[T]here are no high-volume commercial Li-ion batteries (yet!) in which a silicon anode entirely replaces the graphite one. When it does arrive, the reward will have been worth the wait. We expect automotive cells with NCA or NCM cathodes paired with Si-dominant anodes will increase energy density by up to 50%, thereby dropping the $/kWh cost by 30-40% in less than a decade. That is a mind-boggling prize, if any manufacturer can unlock it. (Read Canary’s Julian Spector on Sionic, a battery company that has recently debuted a silicon anode that it says can fit into existing LIB manufacturing.) Silicon anodes are technically “cathode agnostic,” though most testing so far has used NMC cathodes. If engineers can crack the code and make silicon anodes with high cycle life, it could benefit any and all cathodes (e.g., see LFP below).Fluorides as cathodesOne thing I didn’t mention about silicon-as-anode: it doesn’t operate via intercalation. Instead of nestling into the anode, ions react with the silicon and bond with it, a process called “conv