Lithium battery hub making waves in solid-state landscape

Visitors check out Lyric Robot's battery manufacturing equipment at a battery expo in Detroit, the United States, in October. (CHINA DAILY)

Huizhou, Guangdong province, a vital hub in China's lithium battery industry, is taking big strides in the solid-state battery sector with cutting-edge energy storage technology.

"On the equipment front, we have achieved full-process coverage for mass production of all-solid-state batteries," said Du Yixian, director of the research institute at Lyric Robot, a battery automation equipment provider based in Huizhou.

The process, Du added, includes key technologies such as dry electrode coating, thermal compounding of electrolytes, and pouch cell stacking.

Coating is a critical step in battery manufacturing, where active materials are applied to current collectors to form electrodes.

According to Du, traditional wet-coating processes are costly due to the need for drying, and result in significant energy loss. Moreover, the organic solvents used in slurry preparation are often volatile and toxic.

In contrast, the dry-coating technology adopted by Lyric Robot eliminates the need for solvents and high-temperature drying processes, offering a more efficient and eco-friendly alternative, he said.

"Dry-coating is more technically demanding than wet-coating and is poised to become the mainstream method — not only for solid-state batteries, but also for liquid lithiumion batteries," Du added.

At the end of last year, Lyric Robot won a landmark contract from a major domestic automaker for the industry's first complete sulfide-based solid-state battery production line, covering front-end, midstream, and back-end battery manufacturing equipment.

"We've also developed a triple safety protection system specifically designed for sulfide batteries, addressing explosion and toxicity risks, which places our technology in a leading position," Du said.

Regarding project progress, the company said the equipment is currently undergoing production calibration and parameter optimization, with delivery expected in the third quarter of this year. Beyond this disclosed contract, it is also engaged in active technical discussions with several top-tier industry clients on full solid-state battery production lines, according to Lyric Robot.

The domestic manufacturer's momentum extends far beyond the country's borders.

According to the company's co-founder Lu Jiahong, Lyric Robot has also made significant inroads in international markets.

In the United States, the company has already delivered its first front-end solid-state battery equipment and won new orders for module assembly lines, marking a breakthrough in its globalization strategy, Lu said.

The company has also secured batch orders from major global clients and is actively expanding into emerging markets such as India, the Czech Republic and Poland, Lu added.

The company's growth momentum is reflected across Huizhou's wider electronics industry.

From January to May, the city's electronic information industry cluster reported a total output of 244.65 billion yuan ($34.15 billion), up 13.9 percent year-on-year. Among the key growth drivers is the new energy storage segment, which alone contributed 49.25 billion yuan in output, an increase of 17.2 percent.

Downstream players in Huizhou are also making waves in the solid-state battery landscape.

In June, major battery manufacturer EVE Energy announced plans to launch its first-generation all-solid-state battery with an energy density of 350 Wh/kg and 800 Wh/L by 2026. By the end of 2028, it targets to release a second-generation product with a volumetric energy density exceeding 1,000 Wh/L, according to the company.

Ren Ren, an expert from EVE Energy's central research institute, highlighted that the current technical challenges of all-solid-state battery development particularly lie in ensuring stable lithium-ion transport across solid-solid interfaces at low external pressure.

The expert noted that EVE Energy's all-solid-state battery 1.0 will be able to achieve an energy density of 800 Wh/L and operate reliably under a wide temperature range from — 20 C to 60 C and under pressures below 20 MPa.

Market analysts see a bright future for solid-state batteries.

According to China Dragon Securities, semi-solid batteries reached a shipment scale of 10 GWh in 2024, and fully solid-state batteries are expected to enter the GWh-level application phase by 2028.

Energy consultancy EVTank has also projected that global shipments of solid-state batteries, with electrolyte content below 10 percent, will hit 614.1 GWh by 2030, accounting for about 10 percent of all lithium batteries, with an expected market value of over 250 billion yuan.