The lithium-titanate or lithium-titanium-oxide (LTO) battery is a type of rechargeable battery which has the advantage of being faster to charge than other lithium-ion batteries but the disadvantage of having a much lower energy density.

Uses

Titanate batteries are used in certain Japanese-only versions of Mitsubishi's

i-MiEV The Mitsubishi i-MiEV (MiEV is an acronym for ''Mitsubishi innovative Electric Vehicle'') is a five-door hatchback electric car produced in the 2010s by Mitsubishi Motors, and is the electric version of the Mitsubishi i. Rebadged variants o ...

electric vehicle as well as

Honda is a Japanese public multinational conglomerate manufacturer of automobiles, motorcycles, and power equipment, headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. Honda has been the world's largest motorcycle manufacturer since 1959, reaching a producti ...

's EV-neo electric bike and Fit EV. They are also used in the Tosa concept electric bus. Because of the battery's high level of safety and recharge capabilities, LTO batteries are used in car audio applications as well as mobile medical devices. An LTO battery is also used in the

S-Pen Samsung Galaxy (, stylised as SΛMSUNG Galaxy since 2015 (except Japan where it omits the Samsung branding), previously stylised as Samsung GALAXY; abbreviated as SG) is a series of computing and mobile computing devices that are designed, m ...

that comes with the

Samsung The Samsung Group (or simply Samsung) ( ko, 삼성 ) is a South Korean multinational manufacturing conglomerate headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea. It comprises numerous affiliated businesses, most of them united under the ...

Galaxy Note 20 Ultra 5G. According to a Weatherflow Co. article, the Tempest weather-station device contains a 1300mAh LTO battery, charged via four solar panels, requiring "at least 4 hours of adequate sunlight every two weeks."

Chemistry

A lithium-titanate battery is a modified lithium-ion battery that uses lithium-titanate

nanocrystal A ''nanocrystal'' is a material particle having at least one dimension smaller than 100 nanometres, based on quantum dots (a nanoparticle) and composed of atoms in either a single- or poly-crystalline arrangement. The size of nanocrystals dist ...

s, instead of

carbon Carbon () is a chemical element with the symbol C and atomic number 6. It is nonmetallic and tetravalent—its atom making four electrons available to form covalent chemical bonds. It belongs to group 14 of the periodic table. Carbon mak ...

, on the surface of its

anode An anode is an electrode of a polarized electrical device through which conventional current enters the device. This contrasts with a cathode, an electrode of the device through which conventional current leaves the device. A common mnemonic ...

. This gives the anode a surface area of about 100 square meters per gram, compared with 3 square meters per gram for carbon, allowing electrons to enter and leave the anode quickly. Also, the redox potential of Li+ intercalation into titanium oxides is more positive than that of Li+ intercalation into graphite. This leads to fast charging (higher charging current) being much safer in the case of the titanate, than in the case of carbon, since lithium dendrites are less likely to form in the former case. Lithium-titanate cells last for 3000 to 7000 charge cycles; a life cycle of ~1000 cycles before reaching 80% capacity is possible when charged and discharged at , rather than the standard . A disadvantage of lithium-titanate batteries is their lower inherent voltage (2.4 V), which leads to a lower

specific energy Specific energy or massic energy is energy per unit mass. It is also sometimes called gravimetric energy density, which is not to be confused with energy density, which is defined as energy per unit volume. It is used to quantify, for example, sto ...

(about 30–110 Wh/kg) than conventional lithium-ion battery technologies, which have an inherent voltage of 3.7 V. Some lithium-titanate batteries, however, have an energy density of up to 177 Wh/L.

Brands and uses

Log9 Materials

Log9 is launching its tropicalised-ion battery (TiB) backed by lithium ferro-phosphate (LFP) and lithium-titanium-oxide (LTO) battery chemistries. Unlike LFP and LTO, the more popular NMC (Nickel Manganese Cobalt) chemistry does not have the requisite temperature resilience to survive in Indian conditions. LTO is not only temperature resilient, but also has a very long life and is robust.

Altairnano

Altairnano Altair Nanotechnologies Inc. is an American company specializing in the development and manufacturing of energy storage systems for efficient power and energy management. Altair Nantechnologies designs advanced lithium-ion energy systems and batte ...

produces lithium-titanate batteries under the "Nanosafe" line, mainly for

battery electric vehicle A battery electric vehicle (BEV), pure electric vehicle, only-electric vehicle, fully electric vehicle or all-electric vehicle is a type of electric vehicle (EV) that exclusively uses chemical energy stored in rechargeable battery packs, ...

s. Vehicle manufacturers that have announced plans to use Altairnano batteries include

Lightning Car Company The Lightning Car Company is a British sports car developer, originally based in Fulham and Peterborough, the company relocated to Coventry and is focused on the development and production of high performance electric sports cars. As of August ...

, which plans to use them for the

Lightning GT The Lightning GT is a battery-electric sports car under development by the Lightning Car Company, a London-based privately owned and funded business. The project was initially unveiled to the public in July 2008 at the British International M ...

, an all-electric sports car;

Phoenix Motorcars Phoenix Cars LLC, d.b.a. Phoenix Motorcars, is a developer of zero emission, all-electric vehicles ( EV) based in Anaheim, California, United States, focused on the deployment of light- and medium-duty EVs into the fleet and transit markets. Th ...

, for use in its electric sport-utility vehicles; and in Proterra, its all-electric EcoRide BE35 lightweight 35-foot bus. Altairnano has also deployed their lithium-titanate energy storage systems for electric grid ancillary services as well as various military applications.

Grinergy

Grinergy is a South Korean battery manufacturer founded in 2017. We offer both commercial and Warfighter military grade LTO battery technology. They are 2023 CES Innovation Honoree

Leclanché

Leclanché Leclanché is a Swiss Lithium-ion cells and energy storage solutions company founded in 1909. Through a licensed ceramic separator technology and focus on lithium–titanate technology, Leclanché manufactures large-format lithium-ion cells. A ...

is a Swiss battery manufacturer founded in 1909. In 2006, it acquired Bullith AG (Germany) to establish a Li-Ion manufacturing line in Germany. In 2014, their product "TiBox" was launched in the market. The energy content of the TiBox is 3.2 kWh, with an expected 15,000 cycle life span.

Microvast

Microvast Microvast Holdings, Inc. is a battery manufacturer founded in 2006 and headquartered in Stafford, Texas, that makes lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles and energy storage systems. It operates manufacturing bases in the United States, Ch ...

, based in Houston, Texas, makes a lithium-titanate battery that it calls "LpTO". In 2011, the world's first ultrafast charge bus fleet was launched in Chongqing, China. An 80 kWh LpTO battery system was installed in 37 twelve-meter electric buses, which can be fully charged within 10 minutes with a 400 kW charger. As of 2014, a British bus OEM,

Wrightbus Wrightbus is a Northern Ireland based bus manufacturer and a pioneer of the low-floor bus. The company was established in 1946 by Robert Wright and was later run by his son William Wright, until it was acquired in 2019 by British businessman ...

, started to use Microvast LpTO batteries for 1,000 units of double-decker

New Routemaster The New Routemaster, originally referred to as the New Bus for London and colloquially as the Borismaster or Boris Bus, is a low-floor diesel double-decker bus operated in London, England. Designed by Heatherwick Studio and manufactured by W ...

buses. An 18 kWh LpTO battery system is used to replace the initial Lithium Iron Phosphate battery because the LFP battery encountered performance failure. As of 2015, the European ZeEUS (zero emission urban transport system) was launched. Its VDL bus uses a 62.5 kWh LpTO battery system from Microvast for this demonstration project. As of 2016, the world's largest automated port, PSA TUAS, started to use the Microvast LpTO for 22 electric AGVs as a first phase of a project for horizontal container transportation.

Samsung

The

Bluetooth Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology standard that is used for exchanging data between fixed and mobile devices over short distances and building personal area networks (PANs). In the most widely used mode, transmission power is limi ...

-enabled S-Pen in the

Galaxy Note 10 and 10+ contains a lithium-titanate battery which has a stand-by time of 10 hours.

Seiko

Seiko , commonly known as Seiko ( , ), is a Japanese maker of watches, clocks, electronic devices, semiconductors, jewelry, and optical products. Founded in 1881 by Kintarō Hattori in Tokyo, Seiko introduced one of the first quartz watches and the ...

uses lithium-titanate batteries in its Kinetic (

automatic quartz Automatic quartz is a collective term describing watch movements that combine a self-winding rotor mechanism (as used in automatic mechanical watches) to generate electricity with a piezoelectric quartz crystal as its timing element. Such mo ...

) wristwatches. Earlier Kinetic watches used a

capacitor A capacitor is a device that stores electrical energy in an electric field by virtue of accumulating electric charges on two close surfaces insulated from each other. It is a passive electronic component with two terminals. The effect of ...

to store energy, but the battery provides a larger capacity and a longer service life. A technician can easily replace the battery when its capacity eventually deteriorates to an unacceptable level.

Toshiba

Toshiba , commonly known as Toshiba and stylized as TOSHIBA, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. Its diversified products and services include power, industrial and social infrastructure systems, ...

released a lithium-titanate battery, dubbed "Super Charge Ion Battery" (SCiB). The battery is designed to offer 90% charge capacity in just 10 minutes. SCiB batteries are used in the

Schwinn The Schwinn Bicycle Company is an American company that develops, manufactures and markets bicycles under the eponymous brand name. The company was originally founded by Ignaz Schwinn (1860–1948) in Chicago in 1895. It became the dominant manuf ...

Tailwind electric bike. Toshiba has also demonstrated its use as a prototype laptop battery. Toshiba SCiB batteries are used in a Japan-only version of Mitsubishi's

and Minicab MiEV electric vehicles, and

uses them in its EV-neo electric bike and Fit EV, which launched in the summer of 2012. JR Central's N700S Shinkansen uses SCiB batteries to operate at low speed in the event of a disruption to overhead power. Their lithium-titanate battery is low voltage (2.3 nominal voltage), with low energy density (between the lead-acid and lithium ion phosphate), but has extreme longevity, charge/discharge capabilities and a wide amount of operating temperatures.

YABO

YABO Power Technology released a lithium-titanate battery in 2012. The standard model YB-LITE2344 2.4V/15Ah battery cell has been used in electric vehicle and energy storage systems.

Yinlong Energy

Gree introduced its Yinlong Battery Technology, a type of fast-charging LTO (lithium-titanate) battery, which can operate in extreme temperature conditions. The batteries have an operational life-span that goes up to 30 years. Yinlong Energy is committed to supporting the global energy reforms with emphasis on innovation in the fields of new materials, batteries, automobiles and energy storage.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lithium-titanate battery Lithium-ion batteries Rechargeable batteries