Lithium Battery and Lithium-ion Battery

In actual life, people might mix up Lithium Battery and lithium-ion battery because they are a concept that is different mutually but has an continuation and development relationship between each other.

The so-called lithium battery is any battery using metal lithium as cathode active substance whereas lithium-ion battery refers to secondary battery system whose anode and cathode use two different lithium compounds that are able to reversibly embed and de-embed lithium ions. The common point of lithium battery and li-ion battery lies in metal oxides and sulfide as anode, and organic solvent-inorganic salt as electrolyte.

Lithium and li-ion battery is a development course. Lithium battery adopts lithium metal or lithium alloy as anode material and chemically is redox reaction. Afterwards, Sony developed a lithium battery with carbon material as cathode and lithium-containing compound as anode. Lithium ions rather than lithium metal involves in charge and discharge course of this lithium battery. This is li-ion battery.

Strictly, operation mechanism of lithium and li-ion battery is different. Lithium battery is primary battery suitable to continuously or intermittently discharge. Some lithium battery can be used as storage device on wind power, waterpower, solar station, etc. yet li-ion battery is secondary battery, which can be used repeatedly. Currently, li-ion battery is called lithium battery.

Applications of lithium and li-ion battery are different: lithium battery with metal lithium as cathode and MnO2 or SOCl2 as anode, is mostly used on small appliances for special and civilian use, however, li-ion battery are used widely: mobile phone, camcorder, camera, laptop and electric vehicle. In terms of development trend, application field of li-ion battery becomes wide while that of lithium battery gets narrow.

The fundamental difference between lithium and li-ion battery is that lithium ions instead of lithium metal exists in li-ion battery reaction. Therefore, li-ion battery is also called rocking chair battery.