NMC Battery Solid Electrolyte Patents: Leaders, Trends 2026
- Filing peaked in 2019 at 15 families and has not returned to that level since — the midpoint year 2022 sits at just 3, pointing to a cooling claim space rather than a growing one.
- United States receives more than half of all filings 43 of 83 records, more than double the EPO's 22 and nearly nine times China's 5 — filing strategy here is US-first, not China-first.
- No assignee shows positive momentum in the latest year every tracked assignee, including Sumitomo Metal Mining and LG Chem, logged zero filings in the most recent year, consistent with the broader slowdown.
Filing growth compares 2021 (4 records) with 2024 (13) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 83 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
This dataset tracks patent families at the intersection of NMC (nickel manganese cobalt) cathode chemistry and solid or sulfide electrolyte architectures, filtered to core IPC classes covering lithium battery electrodes and non-aqueous electrolyte cells. The search string requires both an NMC cathode term and a solid-state or composite-cathode term in the title or claims, so it captures the overlap zone rather than either field in isolation.
Coverage runs from 2015 through the 2026-07-31 cut-off. Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the 2025 and 2026 counts in any trend understate real filing activity for those years and should be read as provisional.
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 83-family corpus: how filing volume has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses the claims actually sit in.
A 2019 peak followed by a decline
Filings rose from 6 in 2017 to a peak of 15 in 2019, then fell back — the 2022 midpoint of 3 confirms a flat-to-declining trajectory rather than a temporary dip, and no assignee shows fresh activity in the latest tracked year.
Concentrated in H01M, with a cathode-material sideline
All 83 records sit in H01M (batteries, cells & fuel cells) as expected, but a secondary cluster of 14 falls in C01G (compounds of other metals), pointing to precursor and oxide-powder chemistry claims filed alongside the battery-format claims. The A24F and C01D counts are small enough to reflect classification overlap rather than a distinct sub-field.
Shares are the percentage of the 83 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on NMC Battery Solid Electrolyte with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about nmc battery solid electrolyte and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe most-cited prior art in this space
US20220102718A1 — Nickel manganese cobalt composite hydroxide precursor and derived oxide
A nickel manganese cobalt composite hydroxide precursor made of aggregated primary/secondary particles, with sodium content held below 0.0005% by mass and a void ratio of 20–50%, paired with a lithium NMC composite oxide whose average particle size sits within a tight 0.95–1.05 ratio to the precursor.Filed by Sumitomo Metal Mining Co., Ltd., dated 2022-03-31.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20070202405A1 | Layered Lithium Nickel Manganese Cobalt Composite Oxide Powder For Material Of Positive Electrode Of Lithium … | 121 |
| 2 | US20170338471A1 | High capacity and stable cathode materials | 58 |
| 3 | US20190207209A1 | Electrodes with silicon oxide active materials for lithium ion cells achieving high capacity, high energy den… | 51 |
| 4 | EP1742281A1 | Layered lithium nickel manganese cobalt composite oxide powder for material of positive electrode of lithium … | 42 |
| 5 | US20090011334A1 | Lithium secondary battery and positive electrode material thereof | 40 |
| 6 | US20200185709A1 | Lithium tetraborate glass coating on cathode materials for improving safety and cycling ability | 28 |
| 7 | US20200411901A1 | Lithium ion cells with high performance electroyte and silicon oxide active materials achieving very long cyc… | 20 |
| 8 | US8354191B2 | Layered lithium nickel manganese cobalt composite oxide powder for material of positive electrode of lithium … | 18 |
| 9 | CN102447097A | 一种锂离子正极材料镍锰钴的制备方法 | 15 |
| 10 | WO2019040533A1 | Lithium tetraborate glass coating on cathode materials for improving safety and cycling stability | 14 |
Citation counts favour older filings simply because they have had longer to accumulate citations inside this corpus — read them as a signal of influence on later filers, not as a ranking of current 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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Three patterns stand out once the raw counts are read against the timeline and the classification mix.
The claim space cooled after 2019
A peak-then-decline shape, rather than steady growth, suggests the core composite-cathode and sulfide-electrolyte claim territory was staked out early and has not attracted a fresh wave of filers since. New entrants face denser prior art for the same ideas, not an open field.
Filing strategy skews heavily US-first
The United States accounts for more than half of all receiving offices in this set, with Europe a distant second and China, WIPO, India and Japan trailing well behind. A licensing or freedom-to-operate review anchored only in China would miss most of the documented activity.
Precursor-oxide claims run alongside cell claims
The secondary C01G cluster shows that a meaningful slice of this corpus is about the hydroxide/oxide precursor chemistry that feeds NMC cathode production, not just the finished solid-state cell. Reviewing only cell-level IPC classes would undercount this precursor layer.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to nmc battery solid electrolyte, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is active, and where activity has stalled
The assignee list shows breadth without a current front-runner: momentum data for the latest tracked year is flat across every major name.
No assignee shows a live filing streak
Sumitomo Metal Mining, LG Chem, Mitsubishi Chemical, A123 Systems and others all show zero filings in the most recent year, with Sumitomo and A123 specifically down -100% year over year. This is consistent with the corpus-wide 2019 peak-and-decline pattern rather than any single company's retreat.
Joint filing is rare and narrow
Only one co-assignee pairing rises above background noise — a Dutch applied-science research organisation filing jointly with Toyota Motor Corporation, at 4 shared records. Co-filing is not a common go-to-market pattern in this space; most assignees file solo.
Global filing, US-weighted
Activity spans six receiving offices, but the distribution is lopsided: US and EPO together account for the large majority of records, with China, the PCT route, India and Japan splitting a small remainder.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Sumitomo Metal Mining Co., Ltd. | 0 | -100% |
| Jenlab Energy Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Leyden Strategic Holdings | 0 | — |
| Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation | 0 | — |
| A123 Systems, Inc. | 0 | -100% |
| LG Chem, Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) | 0 | — |
| Shenzhen Tongxingda Technology Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
Taking this further
The dataset points to where claim density sits and where it thins out; the next step is testing a specific claim or freedom-to-operate question against it.
Check a draft claim against this corpus
Run a candidate composite-cathode or precursor claim against the 83 families here to see which cited records it would need to design around.
Explore in Patsnap EurekaTrack the under-claimed branches
Sub-areas like precursor void-ratio control show thin filing density now; monitoring them ahead of a fresh filing wave costs less than reacting after one starts.
Explore in Patsnap EurekaCommon questions on this landscape
The ranking in this dataset is led by established cathode-material and battery manufacturers rather than a single dominant filer, and the co-assignee data shows almost no joint filing beyond one pairing between a Dutch research organisation and Toyota. Momentum has flattened across the board: every major tracked assignee, including Sumitomo Metal Mining and LG Chem, shows zero filings in the latest tracked year. That makes this a landscape of established positions rather than an actively contested one right now.
The corpus shows filings rising from 6 in 2017 to a peak of 15 in 2019, then declining toward a midpoint of 3 by 2022. This shape is consistent with an initial wave of core composite-cathode and sulfide-electrolyte claims being staked out early, after which later filers faced denser prior art for the same combinations. Remember that 2025–2026 counts are understated because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so the most recent years should not be read as a confirmed continuation of the decline.
The United States is clearly the primary receiving office in this dataset, with 43 of 83 records, compared with 22 at the EPO and just 5 in China. WIPO (PCT), India and Japan account for a small remainder. Anyone assessing freedom-to-operate risk for NMC solid electrolyte technology should weight a US prior-art search heavily, and not assume China is the center of gravity simply because NMC cathode manufacturing is concentrated there.
US20220102718A1, assigned to Sumitomo Metal Mining and dated 2022-03-31, claims a nickel manganese cobalt composite hydroxide precursor with tightly specified physical properties: sodium content below 0.0005% by mass, a particle void ratio between 20% and 50%, and a defined particle-size ratio between the precursor and the resulting lithium NMC oxide. It is a precursor and process patent rather than a finished-cell or electrolyte-formulation patent, so it primarily constrains how a competitor can produce and characterise the NMC hydroxide feeding into cathode-oxide manufacture, not how the solid electrolyte itself is formulated.
The technology composition data shows a secondary cluster in C01G (compounds of other metals) alongside the dominant H01M battery classification, indicating that precursor and oxide-powder chemistry is filed less densely than finished-cell claims. Specific sub-areas such as precursor void-ratio control, sodium-content limits, and sulfide-electrolyte-to-composite-cathode interface claims show thinner filing density than the core cathode-material and cell-architecture claims. These are reasonable starting points for a design-around or a fresh filing, though a full clearance search should confirm current density before committing claim language.
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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.