Phase-Change Thermal Storage Patents: Leaders, Trends & Gaps 2026
- Filing activity has already peaked. 2021 was the high point at 6 families in a year; the following years sit below that mark, so this is a maturing filing pattern rather than a growing one.
- The art sits inside battery safety, not HVAC. 36 of 40 records classify under H01M (batteries, cells and fuel cells) versus a handful in fire-fighting or switches, meaning the compliance question is driven by battery-pack thermal runaway, not building-scale thermal storage.
- The most-cited record is 86 citations deep. US20140335381A1 on active thermal management and thermal runaway prevention for lithium-ion packs anchors the field and still shapes how later filers draft around it.
What this landscape covers
This search pulls 40 published patent families filed against PCM flammability safety, leak containment safety and thermal runaway prevention language layered onto phase-change material, phase-change thermal storage or latent heat storage terms. The result is a compact, safety-and-compliance-specific slice of a much larger phase-change materials literature: it is not asking who uses PCM for thermal storage, but who has claimed the failure-mode protections around it.
The classification skew toward H01M shows the dominant commercial pressure is battery pack safety rather than building HVAC or industrial process heat storage. Publication for the most recent filing years is understated because grant and publication typically lag filing by around 18 months, so 2025 and 2026 will fill in further as those applications publish.
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Filing trend and technology mix
Two views of the same 40-family dataset: how filing volume has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses the claims actually sit in.
A peak-and-plateau filing curve
Filings rose from zero in 2017 to a peak of 6 in 2021, then eased back toward the 2022 midpoint of 3. That shape reads as an early cluster of safety patenting around lithium-ion pack thermal runaway, followed by consolidation rather than a fresh wave of new entrants.
Concentrated in battery classification
H01M carries 36 of 40 records, dwarfing the next-largest classes, C08J (9) and C08L (8), which cover the polymer matrices and coatings PCM composites are built from. Fire-fighting (A62C, 3) and switches/relays (H01H, 3) appear only at the margins, confirming this dataset is fundamentally about cell- and pack-level containment, not fire-suppression hardware or building-level compliance systems.
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 Phase-Change Thermal Storage Safety and Compliance with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about phase-change thermal storage safety and compliance and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe records other filers had to draft around
Flexible phase change material composite for thermal management systems (US20160319174A1, Beam Global)
A thermal management composite comprising a phase change material within a carbon or graphite matrix. The matrix is coated with a polymer coating to improve flexibility, and can be a molded carbon or graphite material or a carbon or graphite cloth.Filed by Beam Global; published 2016-11-03. Also filed as WO2015095271A1, which independently carries 26 citations in this set.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20140335381A1 | Active Thermal Management and Thermal Runaway Prevention for High Energy Density Lithium Ion Battery Packs | 86 |
| 2 | US20160319174A1 | Flexible phase change material composite for thermal management systems | 31 |
| 3 | WO2015095271A1 | Flexible phase change material composite for thermal management systems | 26 |
| 4 | US20200403201A1 | Apparatus and method for thermal runaway propagation prevention | 19 |
| 5 | US9379419B2 | Active thermal management and thermal runaway prevention for high energy density lithium ion battery packs | 10 |
| 6 | CN113136171A | 电池防热失控填料及其电池模组 | 8 |
| 7 | US20180298261A1 | Flexible phase change material composite for thermal management systems | 7 |
| 8 | US10005941B2 | Flexible phase change material composite for thermal management systems | 5 |
| 9 | CN118554074A | 一种新能源汽车动力电池热失控防御热管理系统 | 4 |
| 10 | WO2014186044A1 | Active thermal management and thermal runaway prevention for high energy density lithium ion battery packs | 4 |
Citation counts favour older filings simply because they have had longer to accumulate citations inside this corpus; treat them as a marker of influence on subsequent drafting, not of current commercial weight.
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 read-throughs from the trend, classification and citation data above.
The safety-claim wave has already crested
A single peak year followed by a step down to the midpoint value suggests the core containment and runaway-prevention mechanisms were claimed early, and later filers are working refinements rather than staking new ground.
This is battery-pack safety art, not HVAC storage
Anyone approaching this space expecting building-scale latent heat storage compliance will find the claim density is almost entirely about lithium-ion cell and pack thermal runaway containment instead.
One filing family anchors the whole search set
US20140335381A1 and its continuation US9379419B2 sit well above every other record on citations, meaning most later applicants have had to draft claims that avoid, license or narrow around this active thermal management approach.
Filing here is mostly a solo activity
Only three co-assignee pairings appear in the set, each a single instance, and two of the three involve universities pairing with individual named inventors or another university rather than a corporate partner, so joint corporate R&D is not yet a visible pattern.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to phase-change thermal storage safety and compliance, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is active, and where the room to file still sits
Recent-year momentum is flat across the named assignees in this set, which changes what 'leader' means here: it points to who built the foundational claims, not who is filing fastest today.
Early lithium-ion safety claims still set the terms
The most-cited record and its continuation belong to the active thermal management and runaway-prevention lineage that anchors this dataset; any new filer in battery-pack containment should expect to be read against it.
Composite matrix approach filed in parallel jurisdictions
Beam Global's flexible PCM composite claims, built on a carbon or graphite matrix with a polymer flexibility coating, were filed both domestically and via PCT, and rank second and third on citations.
Named leaders show no fresh filings in the latest tracked year
Every assignee surfaced in the recent-momentum view, spanning aerospace, battery cell makers and specialty materials firms, shows zero filings in the most recent year, consistent with the broader plateau in the filing trend.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| The Boeing Company | 0 | — |
| Ossyla Technologies | 0 | — |
| Rogers Corporation | 0 | — |
| LG Energy Solution, Ltd. | 0 | — |
| RELYION ENERGY INC | 0 | — |
| Hubei EVE Power Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Texas A&M University | 0 | -100% |
| Guangzhou Energy Testing Institute | 0 | — |
Where to take this
The dataset points to a mature core and a thin periphery. Two directions follow from that.
Map the design-around space around the lead family
Before drafting new pack-level runaway containment claims, work out precisely what US20140335381A1 and US9379419B2 cover so any new filing sits clearly outside their claim scope.
Explore in EurekaTest the under-claimed branches for freedom to operate
Fire-suppression integration and switch/relay-level isolation carry only a handful of records each; that low density is worth confirming before committing R&D spend to those directions.
Explore in EurekaCommon questions on this landscape
This search identifies 40 published patent families spanning 2015 to mid-2026, combining phase-change material and latent heat storage terms with flammability, leak containment and thermal runaway prevention language. That is a narrow, safety-specific slice of the broader PCM literature, not a count of every patent that mentions phase-change materials. Because the search string requires both a PCM term and a safety-specific term, it deliberately excludes general PCM composition or manufacturing patents that do not address a failure mode.
The filing trend peaked in 2021 at 6 families in a year and has eased since, with the 2022 midpoint sitting at 3. That pattern reads as flat-to-declining rather than growing, though the very last one or two years in any patent dataset are always undercounted because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months. A practitioner should treat 2025 and 2026 figures as provisional and expect some upward revision as pending applications publish.
36 of the 40 records in this set classify under H01M, the IPC subclass for batteries, cells and fuel cells, because the dominant commercial driver for PCM safety claims is lithium-ion battery pack thermal runaway containment, not building-scale heating and cooling. Codes tied to fire-fighting equipment or switches and relays each appear in only a handful of records. Anyone searching this space expecting HVAC-grade latent heat storage compliance patents will instead find the claim density concentrated in cell- and pack-level protection mechanisms.
US20140335381A1, on active thermal management and thermal runaway prevention for high energy density lithium-ion battery packs, carries 86 citations in this dataset, well ahead of any other record, with its continuation US9379419B2 also charting. Its citation count indicates it has shaped how a large share of later filers drafted their own claims to avoid overlap. Any freedom-to-operate review in battery-pack runaway containment should start by mapping claim scope against this family specifically.
The classification mix points to several thinner branches: fire-suppression integration with PCM packaging, switch- or relay-level runaway isolation, and leak-containment coating durability each show only light representation relative to the core battery-pack containment art. Filing activity is also concentrated in the United States, WIPO/PCT, Europe and China, with comparatively few India- or Canada-first filings, which may leave regional filing gaps. These are areas where claim space looks open rather than crowded, though that should be confirmed with a dedicated freedom-to-operate search before committing R&D resources.
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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.