Conductive Carbon Additives for Batteries Patents: Leaders & Gaps 2026
- 65.0% concentration. The top 5 of 26 ranked assignees hold 26 of 40 records in scope — filing sits with a small group, not a broad field.
- Filings peaked in 2020, then fell. The trend runs from 1 record in 2017 to a peak of 8 in 2020, flat at the 2022 midpoint, and down to 0 in the most recent year — read the last year or two as undercounted, not dead.
- South Korea leads receiving offices. 14 of the tracked filings route through South Korea, ahead of the United States at 8 and Europe, China and India each in single digits.
What this landscape covers
Conductive carbon additives — carbon black, single-wall carbon nanotubes, and related nanostructured carbons — are used to lower internal resistance in battery electrodes without adding significant mass. This landscape covers 40 published records filed between 2015 and the 2026 data cut-off, drawn from a search string targeting conductive carbon black, conductive additive electrode, and single-wall carbon nanotube claims across battery, inorganic-materials and carbon-black IPC classes. Patent families are the unit used for ranking, which neutralises continuation filings and multi-jurisdiction duplicates so the assignee picture reflects distinct inventions rather than paperwork volume.
Filing activity is small in absolute terms but concentrated: a handful of assignees account for most of the record set, and the technology composition skews heavily toward carbon-material chemistry classes rather than battery-cell classes, which says something about where the actual claim work is happening.
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Filing trend and technology mix
The two views below cover the same 40 records in scope but answer different questions: one tracks when filings happened, the other tracks what they claim.
Filing trend, 2017-2026
Filings rose from a single record in 2017 to a peak of 8 in 2020, then fell back, sitting at 0 by the 2022 midpoint and again in the most recent year. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the last one to two years understate real activity — treat the recent drop as a data-lag artefact until later cuts confirm it.
Technology composition by IPC subclass
C01B (non-metallic elements and inorganic compounds) covers 75.0% of the 40 records, far ahead of H01M (batteries, cells and fuel cells) at 32.5% and B82Y (nanotechnology applications) at 30.0%. Because a record can carry several IPC classes, these shares add up to more than 100% — the pattern to read is that most inventions here are claimed as carbon-material chemistry first, battery application second.
Shares are the percentage of the 40 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Conductive Carbon Additives for Batteries with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about conductive carbon additives for batteries and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaMost-cited records in scope
A fast response carbon nanotubes stretch sensor (WO2024231950A1)
Filed by NOPO Nanotechnologies India, this filing claims a horizontally aligned single-wall carbon nanotube layer on a flexible substrate with electrodes at each end, built by filling a single-wall carbon nanotube solution in acid between two rigid substrates and pressing and pushing one substrate against the other while the layer forms.The claim is aimed at a stretch-sensor construction rather than a battery electrode, but the alignment and layering method sits squarely inside the same single-wall carbon nanotube processing space this landscape tracks.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20120115049A1 | Single wall carbon nanotube based air cathodes | 73 |
| 2 | WO2020243112A1 | Films of multiwall, few wall, and single wall carbon nanotube mixtures | 14 |
| 3 | KR1020030091977A | Process for derivatizing carbon nanotubes withdiazonium species and compositions thereof | 8 |
| 4 | US20220144641A1 | Films of multiwall, few wall, and single wall carbon nanotube mixtures | 5 |
| 5 | JP2011063468A | Process for producing single wall carbon nanotube | 5 |
| 6 | CN117219774A | 一种导电交联粘结剂构造的无导电助剂电极、制备方法及其应用 | 4 |
| 7 | KR1020190048304A | Method of manufacturing anode active material of lead-acid battery using single wall carbon nanotube | 3 |
| 8 | KR1020020024574A | Nanotube-based high energy material and method | 3 |
| 9 | TW202106617A | Films of multiwall, few wall, and single wall carbon nanotube mixtures | 2 |
| 10 | US11820659B2 | Films of multiwall, few wall, and single wall carbon nanotube mixtures | 2 |
Citation counts inside a searched corpus favour older filings that have had more time to accumulate citations — read them as a signal of influence on later work, not as a measure of current commercial importance.
Patent titles are shown in the language they were filed in, not translated, so that each record stays verifiable against the original filing — a translated title will not match in Eureka or in any national register. Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for a filing decision
Three patterns in this data set matter more than any single ranking: where filing concentrates, where the claim language actually sits, and where the geographic gate is.
Filing sits with a small group
The top 5 of 26 ranked assignees account for 26 of the 40 records in scope, and the top 10 reach 82.5%. A single leader holds 10 records against a fifth-place assignee at 3 and a tenth-place assignee at 1 — the drop-off from leader to mid-pack is steep.
Claims cluster on the material, not the cell
Three-quarters of records in scope carry a C01B (non-metallic elements & inorganic compounds) classification versus 32.5% for H01M (battery cells). Most inventive effort here is being claimed as carbon chemistry and processing, with the battery use case as a secondary application class.
Activity has cooled since 2020
The filing count peaked at 8 in 2020, dropped to 0 by the 2022 midpoint, and has not recovered through the most recent tracked year. Several leading assignees show 0 filings in the latest year, including one at -100% year-on-year.
South Korea is the busiest gate
South Korea receives 14 of the tracked filings, ahead of the United States at 8, Europe (EPO) at 4, and China and India at 3 each, with WIPO PCT filings also at 3. A filing strategy built only around the US or EPO would miss where over a third of this activity is actually being registered.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to conductive carbon additives for batteries, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and who has gone quiet
The ranked assignee list covers 26 companies and research institutions — this is the complete set the data endpoint returns, not a curated top-50 or top-100.
One assignee sets the pace
The leading assignee holds 10 of the 40 records in scope, well ahead of the fifth-place assignee at 3 and the tenth-place assignee at 1. That gap defines the shape of this field more than the size of the ranked list does.
Recent-year activity has gone quiet across the board
Every assignee tracked for recent-year momentum shows 0 filings in the latest year, including one research institute down -100% year-on-year. This lines up with the broader 2020-peak-then-decline trend rather than signalling any single company's exit.
Filing is mostly solo
Only 5 co-assignee pairs appear across the whole record set, and the strongest pair — a materials-testing institute and a research society — files together just 3 times. Most records in this landscape are single-assignee filings.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Lintec of America, Inc. | 0 | — |
| University of Florida Research Foundation, Inc. | 0 | — |
| Max Planck Gesellschaft zur Foerderung der Wissenschaften eV | 0 | — |
| Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (EMPA) | 0 | — |
| Cheorwon Plasma Research Institute | 0 | -100% |
| Xinjiang University | 0 | — |
| NOPO NANOTECHNOLOGIES | 0 | -100% |
| NOPO NANOTECH INDIA PTE LTD | 0 | — |
Where to take this next
This landscape shows concentration and technology skew at a point in time. Turning it into a filing or freedom-to-operate decision means going deeper on the specific claims that sit closest to your own work.
Check the leader's full claim set
Before drafting around this space, pull the full claim history of the top-ranked assignee rather than relying on the record count alone.
Explore assignee claims in EurekaMap the white space chips to real filings
The under-claimed branches listed here are starting points, not conclusions — run each against the current global filing set to confirm the gap still holds.
Run a white space search in EurekaTrack the next data cut
Because the last one to two years are undercounted by publication lag, revisit this trend once a later cut is available before concluding the field has cooled for good.
Set up monitoring in EurekaCommon questions on conductive carbon additive patents
Filing in this space is concentrated: the top 5 of 26 ranked assignees account for 26 of the 40 records in scope, or 65.0%, and the single leading assignee holds 10 records on its own. The gap from leader to fifth place (3 records) is steep, which means checking the leader's claims first gives more useful information than scanning the full ranked list. Beyond the top 10, which together hold 82.5% of records, filing thins into single-record entrants.
Filings peaked at 8 in 2020 and have declined since, dropping to 0 by the 2022 midpoint and again in the most recent tracked year. That said, publication typically lags actual filing by roughly 18 months, so the most recent one to two years in any patent trend are understated by default. The honest read is that the field cooled after 2020, but the very latest data point should not be trusted as a final answer.
C01B (non-metallic elements and inorganic compounds) is the dominant class, appearing on 75.0% of the 40 records in scope, ahead of H01M (batteries, cells and fuel cells) at 32.5% and B82Y (nanotechnology applications) at 30.0%. Because a single record can carry multiple IPC classes, these percentages add up to more than 100%, and the pattern shows that most inventions are claimed as carbon-material chemistry first, with the battery application as a secondary classification. B32B (layered products), B01J (catalysis) and B82B (nanostructures) all appear at lower but non-trivial shares.
South Korea is the busiest receiving office in this data set with 14 tracked filings, followed by the United States at 8, Europe (EPO) at 4, and China and India at 3 each, with WIPO PCT filings also at 3. A strategy built only around US or European filings would miss the office handling the largest single share of this activity. This distribution reflects where applicants have chosen to file, not necessarily where the underlying manufacturing or research base sits.
The highest-cited record in scope is US20120115049A1, covering single-wall carbon nanotube-based air cathodes, cited 73 times within this corpus. High citation counts inside a searched corpus tend to favour older filings simply because they have had more years to accumulate citations, so this should be read as a signal of foundational influence rather than a claim that the technology is still the most commercially relevant today. Newer high-citation entries, such as WO2020243112A1 on multiwall and single-wall nanotube mixture films, point to where citation activity is currently building.
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Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company’s registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.