The Growing Role of NMP in the Lithium Battery Industry and Beyond

NMP is mainly used in the lithium battery industry. In addition, it also has a small amount of applications in the polymer materials, electronics industry, and pharmaceutical industry, but the proportion of applications in the lithium battery industry is not as high.

In the lithium battery industry, it is mainly used as a front-end solvent for lithium batteries, and it is a supporting solvent for the positive electrode binder of lithium batteries. In recent years, with the rapid development of the lithium battery industry, China's lithium battery consumption has increased significantly, driving the consumption explosion of lithium battery related industries, and at the same time driving the growth of China's NMP consumption in the lithium battery industry.

In addition, NMP can also be applied in the electronics industry, high-resolution materials, and pharmaceutical industries, which are currently relatively hot industries in China. Among them, NMP is used as an essential chemical solvent for participating in chemical reactions and dilutions in the manufacturing process of polymer materials such as aramid, polyphenylene sulfide, and polyimide. Brother Pingtou believes that the application in the lithium battery industry is one of the key factors driving the explosive growth of China's NMP consumption.

Usually lithium battery auxiliary materials mainly include solvents and binders. The main function of the solvent is to dissolve the positive and negative active materials, and the main function of the binder is to bind the active materials to the current collector. Generally, the cost of auxiliary materials accounts for 2%-5% of lithium batteries, which is relatively small compared with lithium battery materials, electrolyte and diaphragm materials, and is easy to ignore.

Among them, NMP is one of the auxiliary materials of lithium batteries. When making electrode sheets, NMP is used as a solvent, which is miscible with water, PVDF, positive and negative materials, etc. The substances need to be fused together so that the binder and other substances are in full contact and evenly distributed. Therefore, NMP, as a solvent, directly affects the quality of lithium battery slurry coating, thereby affecting the quality of lithium batteries.