Lithium batteries like to use graphite anode materials

The roble had hit a record low after the West imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia for its aggression in Ukraine. Russia's president recently ordered exports of Russian gas to "unfriendly" countries to be settled in robles. The speaker of Russia's upper house of parliament said Moscow was prepared and could shift supplies to markets such as Asia if Europe refused to buy Russian energy.

European countries, which pay mostly in euros, say Russia has no right to reset contracts.  The G7 rejected Russia's demand and urged companies not to agree to pay in robles, saying most contracts stipulated payment in euros or dollars. Wholesale gas prices in Europe have risen further recently on concerns about potential supply disruptions.

The Kremlin spokesman said, "According to the March 31 deadline set by Russia's president, we are developing all payment methods to get a simple, understandable, and feasible system for relevant European and international buyers,"

The markets and prices of more commodities like the graphite would be affected because of the volatile international political situations.

Lithium-ion battery refers to a secondary battery system in which two different lithium intercalation compounds that can reversibly intercalate and deintercalation lithium ions are used as the battery's positive electrode and negative electrode, respectively. During charging, lithium ions are deintercalated from the positive electrode through the electrolyte and separator and embedded in the negative electrode; on the contrary, lithium ions are deintercalated from the negative electrode through discharge of the electrolyte the separator and embedded in the positive electrode. The negative electrode of the lithium-ion battery is made of harmful electrode active material, binder, and additives mixed to make a paste glue, which is evenly spread on both sides of the copper foil, dried, and rolled.

Advantages of graphite as anode material

Graphite is an allotrope of carbon, and the two are closely related. Graphite is the most stable form of carbon. (Diamond is a metastable allotrope of carbon. Although its hardness is much higher than graphite, it is the hardest substance in nature, but its stability is lower than that of graphite.)

The word "graphite" comes from the Greek word "graphein," which is resistant to high temperature and corrosion, has good electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, and stable chemical properties, and is lighter than aluminum. In addition to being used as anode material for lithium-ion batteries, high-quality graphite can also be used in different fields such as fuel cells, solar cells, semiconductors, light-emitting diodes, and nuclear reactors.

In general, graphite has the advantages of high electronic conductivity, the small volume change of layered structure before and after lithium intercalation, high lithium intercalation capacity, and low lithium intercalation potential, and has become the mainstream commercial lithium-ion battery negative electrode material.

How to get graphite?

There are two ways to obtain graphite: one is natural ore, and the other is the synthesis of coal tar. The graphite materials used in lithium-ion batteries are generally prepared by blending 55% synthetic graphite and 45% low-purity natural graphite.

Manufacturers once favored synthetic graphite because the uniformity and purity of synthetic graphite were better than natural graphite. Now it is not the same. The application of modern chemical purification methods makes it possible to obtain 99.9% pure natural graphite after heat treatment. In contrast, synthetic graphite is 99% pure, making the former more popular.

Compared with synthetic graphite, purified natural flake graphite has higher crystallinity and exhibits better electrical and thermal conductivity. In addition, natural graphite is expected to reduce the production cost of lithium-ion batteries while achieving equal or better battery performance.

High-quality graphite supplier

Luoyang Moon & Star New Energy Technology Co., LTD, founded on October 17, 2008, is a high-tech enterprise committed to developing, producing, processing, selling, and technical services of lithium-ion battery anode materials. After more than 10 years of development, the company has gradually developed into a diversified product structure with natural graphite, artificial graphite, composite graphite, intermediate phase, and other negative materials (silicon-carbon materials, etc.). The products are widely used in high-end lithium-ion digital power and energy storage batteries. If you are looking for Lithium battery anode material, click on the needed products and send us an inquiry：sales@graphite-corp.com

The development of the Russia-Ukraine conflict will continue to dominate the commodity prices such as the graphite in the future. If the conflict eases or cools, Russia and Ukraine go back to negotiate, commodity prices would fall. However, if the situation between Russia and Ukraine deteriorates further, or evolves into a full-scale war, the price of the graphite is predicted to see further improvement over the coming days.

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