A Patent Landscape on Liquid Electrolytes for Lithium-Ion Batteries

A patent analysis method has been applied to study patenting activities on development of liquid electrolytes for lithium-ion batteries. The method is done via two steps: First, planning a searching strategy and second, an analysis of the information obtained from selected patents. The results showed that the patents on liquid electrolytes for Li-ion cells were published in a time interval of 1964 to 2017 with a significant growing publishing number between 2010 and 2013. The obtained patenting time trend illustrated that the technical knowledge of this technology has been became probably mature and it is predicted that patenting trend in this area will be continued with a slow rate in upcoming years. It was found that Japan, China, South Korea and USA are the most targeted countries for patent publication in this field which is an indicator of their potential market for this technology. Investigation of the competitors patent assignees showed that LG CHEM, Mitsubishi Chemicals, UBE Industries, Sony and Sanyo Electric are the pioneer players having more patented publications among others, respectively.