LG Energy Solution, Seoul National University crack key barrier to next-generation LMR battery commercialization

LG Energy Solution and Seoul National University have secured a key technology that dramatically improves the stability of next-generation lithium manganese-rich, or LMR, batteries, opening the door to commercialization.

LG Energy Solution announced Monday that it had achieved a research breakthrough in collaboration with a team led by Im Jong-woo, a professor in the Department of Chemistry at Seoul National University, demonstrating the feasibility of applying LMR batteries in large-format cells for electric vehicles.

The findings were published in Nature Communications, a peer-reviewed international journal, in recognition of their technical and academic significance.

The joint research team identified the causes of gas generation and capacity degradation during LMR battery charging and discharging, and developed optimal operating conditions for large-format cells to control these problems.

LMR is a next-generation cathode material that eliminates cobalt and uses low-cost manganese as its primary component, dramatically reducing material costs. It achieves high energy density by harnessing not only transition metals such as nickel and manganese but also the oxygen within the material itself for energy storage.

However, when oxidized oxygen during charging fails to fully recover during discharging, it can damage the battery's internal structure and trigger gas generation. In large-format cells for electric vehicles, where internal space is limited, this leads to rising internal pressure and performance degradation — long considered the biggest obstacle to LMR commercialization.

The joint team conducted a precise analysis of oxygen oxidation and reduction behavior under varying charge and discharge conditions, and found that the key variable governing oxygen recovery lies not only in the upper charge voltage cutoff but also in the lower discharge voltage cutoff.

In practice, lowering the upper charge voltage from 4.6V to 4.3V raised the reduction rate of oxidized oxygen significantly, from 86 percent to 97 percent. The team also confirmed that discharging to 2.0V, rather than the conventional 3.0V, allowed oxygen to recover to nearly its original state.

Building on these findings, LG Energy Solution's researchers redesigned the operating voltage range and activation process conditions for a 40Ah-class LMR large-format cell. They applied a lower-temperature process during the activation stage to effectively suppress the gas generation characteristic of large-format cells.

As a result, the optimized 40Ah-class LMR large-format cell retained 92.2 percent of its initial energy after 883 charge-discharge cycles, demonstrating exceptional cycle stability.

"This research identified the degradation mechanism of LMR batteries from the perspective of oxygen reversibility, and showed that cell stability can be improved through electrochemical protocol design alone," Im said. "We confirmed that long-term stability in LMR batteries requires comprehensive consideration of both charging and discharging conditions."

An LG Energy Solution official said the research "demonstrates that gas generation — one of the key challenges for LMR batteries — can be effectively suppressed to achieve stable battery life even in large-format cells," adding that it "lays an important foundation for accelerating growth in the next-generation LMR battery market."

Meanwhile, LG Energy Solution recently signed a 10-year lithium carbonate supply agreement with US-based Smackover Lithium covering a total of 80,000 metric tons — enough to produce about 1.8 million high-performance electric vehicles capable of traveling more than 500 kilometers on a single charge.