With the accelerating transition to electric vehicles (EVs), demand for the materials used to produce batteries will increase significantly and rapidly. Aside from the lithium needed to produce modern lithium-ion batteries, much attention is focused on the cost of the materials used for EV battery cathode production.

Cobalt is an important ingredient in lithium-ion battery cathode production, accounting for about a quarter of the cost of the battery. The price for cobalt spiked to $40 per pound in 2018, but returned to $25 dollars per pound in 2021. Cobalt is now trading on the London Metal Exchange (LME) at around $79,000 per tonne (US$35.83/lb), while a 15-month contract is currently bidding for more than US$80,000/tonne (US$36.29/lb).

(The next most expensive material is nickel—$9 per pound in 2021. Nickel prices have now soared to $52,700 a metric ton (US$23.90/lb)—the highest in the 35-year history of the contract trading on the LME—driven by concern over Russian supplies.)

Source: DOE

Due to the high cost and price volatility associated with cobalt, battery manufacturers/researchers are seeking alternatives to reduce or eliminate the need for cobalt in battery production.

A team from Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) recently reviewed the science and technology gaps and potential of numerous cobalt-free Li-ion cathodes including layered, spinel, olivine, and disordered rock-salt systems. Their paper is published in Advanced Energy Materials.

They found that while “zero-cobalt” Li-ion batteries to enable sustainable production of EVs in the coming decades has enormous promise, scale-up and manufacturing bottlenecks associated with these materials must also be addressed to enable widespread adoption in commercial batteries.

Resources

• Nitin Muralidharan, Ethan C. Self, Marm Dixit, Zhijia Du, Rachid Essehli, Ruhul Amin, Jagjit Nanda, Ilias Belharouak (2022) “Next-Generation Cobalt-Free Cathodes – A Prospective Solution to the Battery Industry's Cobalt Problem” Advanced Energy Materials doi: 10.1002/aenm.202103050