Lithium Metal Battery Market to Surpass $13 Billion Market By 2035

Lithium metal batteries offer a revolutionary new avenue for enhancing modern battery technology. Current lithium-ion batteries utilize a graphite anode, which limits the battery’s maximum energy density. Energy density is a limiting factor in several key applications, notably electric vehicles, where limited capacity means limited vehicle range.

Current-generation electric vehicles can achieve maximal ranges of around 400km. Lithium metal batteries could offer a range enhancement of 50% or more. IDTechEx’s new report, “Lithium Metal Batteries 2025-2035: Technology, Players, and Forecasts“, expects the lithium metal battery industry to exceed US$13 billion by 2035, with electric vehicle deployments making up around 78% of the market.

Lithium metal anodes offer the highest gravimetric energy density possible of any anode for batteries based on lithium-ion chemistry. As such, they have been a primary target for commercialization efforts.

However, previous products failed due to the high instability of lithium metal anode batteries. Lithium dendrites are the primary failure mechanism.

Lithium metal is plated and stripped from the anode current collector through charging and discharging. Inhomogeneous plating leads to tendril-like formations on the current collector’s surface, known as lithium dendrites.

These dendrites can pierce the solid electrolyte interface layer (SEI) and react with the electrolyte, losing active material. Over time, this limits battery lifetime and leads to early cell failure. Short circuits can also occur if the dendrites reach the cathode layer, rendering the battery useless.

The challenge of lithium dendrites has led to the slow development of the technology. Several solutions have been proposed to improve battery lifetime and performance. Separators can prevent dendrites from reaching the electrolyte and regulate ion deposition and transfer through special coatings.

Alternatively, a solid-state electrolyte can serve the same purpose but may limit interface conductivity. Lithium metal plating and stripping have also proven to be regulated by high temperature and pressure, though it could be challenging to integrate these into working conditions. Slow charging and fast discharging are also advantageous for lithium metal battery operation.

However, this is often at odds with consumer demand in the electric vehicle industry, where fast charging is desired. Thanks to combining these approaches, many players’ lifetime concerns are beginning to be solved, and commercialization has already started.

There are three primary designs of interest for lithium metal batteries. The first two are differentiated by their electrolyte: solid-state and liquid. One significant advantage of a solid-state battery system is enabling lithium metal anodes. As such, many solid-state battery developers are expected to move towards lithium metal, with some already having successful products.

The Challenge of Lithium Dendrites

Meanwhile, lithium metal batteries with liquid electrolytes have experienced slower development due to the challenge of lithium dendrites. Once developed, they are expected to offer higher specific energy and potentially take advantage of existing battery production infrastructure, which could reduce costs.

Lithium-sulfur is the final lithium metal battery of interest, differentiated using a sulfur cathode rather than incumbent cathode technology (NMC and LFP). It offers higher gravimetric energy density but an additional failure mechanism in the form of a polysulfide shuttle. As such, its development is slow, and its overall lifetime is expected to be even more limited than that of other lithium metal technologies.

Due to their high energy density, lithium metal batteries have many interesting applications. Aviation, maritime, and defense could be exciting, as high energy density (gravimetric energy density) is heavily favored for these applications.

However, the size of potential deployments in these markets is relatively small, e.g., the unmanned aerial vehicle/drone market, which is expected to stay below 1 GWh for the next decade. Satellites could also be an interesting fit, though penetration into satellites almost depends entirely on SpaceX, which makes up more than 70% of satellites launched yearly. As such, electric vehicles are expected to be the largest source of demand, and most lithium metal battery developers are focusing on this market.

Mass Production

Lithium metal batteries are well placed to see significant adoption in the next ten years. IDTechEx anticipates mass production of solid-state lithium metal in 2027/2028, liquid electrolyte lithium metal in 2029/2030,6 and lithium- sulfur in 2031/2032. Solid-state lithium metal is expected to remain the dominant market proportion throughout this period, making up over 70% of the total market by 2035.