PotenCia® has many features compared to conventional carbon black and carbon nanotube (CNT), such as long length, high dispersibility, highly electrical conductivity etc. When used in LIB system, PotenCia® indicates higher performance and can improve durability of battery with low concentration. Development of high capacity LIB with thicker electrode and/or higher density is now in trend and PotenCia® can be applied with higher for those LIB, performance*.

• *Electrochemical Society of Japan (ECSJ) 81st Meeting, 2Q12, Improvement of the high-rate characteristics of the thick electrode with carbon nanofiber, Kazuki Yachi, Shinya Komura, Ryota Hirakawa, Takahiro Daidou, Takashi Shiro.

Image of lithium-ion battery using PotenCia®

PotenCia® are pitch based fine carbon fibers obtained by polymer blend technique, which is a traditional technique for polyester fine fiber.
Spinning pitch, raw materials of fine carbon ｆibers, and polyethylene were mixed (1) and extruded from a spinneret to form blend fibers which is contained fine pitch fibers (2). The pitch in blend fibers were stabilized with chemical reactions (3) and the polyethylene of blend fibers was removed with thermal decomposition reaction (4) to obtained isolated fine pitch fibers. After heat treatment, carbonization and graphitization (5), pitch based PotenCia® were obtained.

Normal CNT has metal impurities because of use of metal catalyst in the process. The metal impurities might be a problem in the field of electronics such as LIB. On the other hand, the purity of PotenCia® is high because of no metal in the process. Additionally, PotenCia® also has a potential of low cost because of production with conventional melt spinning technique.