Tesla's PDO Patent // One-Upping the 'Million Mile Battery'?

Welcome back everyone, I'm Jordan Geisigee and this is The Limiting Factor. Last year, Tesla filed a patent application for a method of synthesis of 3R142 dioxazole 5-ones. The question is, what does that word soup mean and what are the implications of the patent? In short, the patent is for a process to produce a new electrolyte additive more simply and cheaply. But the more important part of the story is that the new electrolyte additive can be used to dramatically increase the cycle life of lithium ion batteries, so much so that the additive appears to be competitive with the electrolyte blends that were used in Jeff Don's groundbreaking million-mile battery.

大家欢迎回来，我是乔丹·盖西吉（Jordan Geisigee），这是《限制因素》节目。去年，特斯拉申请了一项用于合成3R142二氧杂苯并-5酮的方法的专利申请。 问题是，这个专利的一大意义是什么，对这个专利有什么影响？简单来说，该专利是关于一种更简单、更便宜地生产新型电解质添加剂的方法。但更重要的是，这种新电解质添加剂可以大幅提高锂离子电池的循环寿命，以至于该添加剂似乎能与杰夫·唐的开创性百万英里电池中所使用的电解质混合物媲美。

Before we begin, a special thanks to my Patreon supporters, YouTube members and Twitter subscribers, as well as RebellionAir.com. They specialize in helping investors manage concentrated positions. RebellionAir can help with covered calls, risk management, and creating a money master plan from your financial first principles.

在我们开始之前，特别感谢我的Patreon支持者、YouTube会员和Twitter订阅者，以及RebellionAir.com。他们专门帮助投资者管理集中头寸。RebellionAir可以提供有关认购期权、风险管理以及根据您的财务基本原则创建一个资金主计划的帮助。

Starting with the cover page of the patent, 3R142 dioxazole 5-ones is a mouthful and actually refers to a family of chemicals. To keep it simple, for the rest of the video, I'm going to just refer to one specific chemical within that family called PDO. That's because, as we'll see in a moment, that appears to be the specific chemical that Tesla's most interested in.

从专利的封面开始，3R142二恶嗪5酮是一个相当复杂的名字，实际上涉及一类化学物质。为了简单起见，在接下来的视频中，我将只讨论这个家族中的一种特定化学物质，叫做PDO。因为，正如我们很快会看到的那样，这似乎是特斯拉最感兴趣的具体化学物质。

Next, the patent applicant is Tesla and the inventors are David Hall, Jeff Don and Torrin Heitz. As you probably know if you've been following my channel, Jeff Don is renowned in the battery field and is Tesla's research partner. So this patent application would have resulted from that partnership. The patent was filed on June 30, 2022 and published on February 2, 2023. Then if we look closer, we can see that there's related US application data. As it turns out, this patent application is a continuation of another that was filed in June of 2019. That patent application received a patent in July of 2022. So why is Tesla filing a patent application if they've already received a patent? From what I can tell, it's because the first patent grant was for the synthesis process, but they also want patents on some of the specific chemical compositions that they've developed with that process. That is, they're in a good position already in terms of patenting, but they're seeking as much patent protection as possible.

接下来，专利申请人是特斯拉，发明人是David Hall、Jeff Don和Torrin Heitz。如果您一直关注我的频道，可能就知道Jeff Don在电池领域非常有声望，也是特斯拉的研究合作伙伴。因此，这个专利申请可能是由于这种合作而产生的。这项专利申请于2022年6月30日提交，于2023年2月2日公布。然后，如果我们仔细看，可以看到有相关的美国申请数据。原来，这个专利申请是之前在2019年6月提出的另一个专利的延续。那个专利申请在2022年7月获得了专利。那么，如果他们已经获得了专利，为什么特斯拉还要申请专利呢？据我所知，这是因为第一次专利授予是针对合成过程的，但他们也希望对他们用这个过程开发的一些具体化学组合物获得专利。也就是说，他们在专利方面已经处于一个良好的位置，但他们希望尽可能多地获得专利保护。

Moving along, the title of the patent application states that it's for a method of synthesis. This told me that most of what's going to be in the patent has nothing to do with what the chemical is going to be used for, but rather how to make it. When I skimmed through the document, that assumption was quickly confirmed. Most of the patent application was a mess of chemical compounds and testing parameters. It was pages of data rather than what most of us would consider useful information.

继续阅读，专利申请的标题表明它是一种合成方法。这告诉我，专利中将包含的大部分内容与化学物质将被用于什么无关，而是关于如何制造它。当我浏览文件时，这一假设很快得到了证实。大部分的专利申请是一堆化合物和测试参数的混乱。它是一连串的数据，而不是我们大多数人会认为有用的信息。

The useful information I did find was in the background information part of the patent. First, PDO is being tested as an electrolyte additive to extend the lifetime of lithium-ion batteries. The way electrolyte additives work is by reacting with other chemicals in the electrolyte solution, like lithium, to form a protective layer on the anode of the battery, but also to a lesser extent the cathode. That protective layer prevents the electrolyte from continuing to react with the electrolyte solution, which would cause the battery to degrade and quickly lose cycle life. That means even a small amount of additive can dramatically increase cycle life. For example, adding 1% PDO to a battery can triple its cycle life, which is less than 2 grams for a battery cell that weighs 1 kilogram.

我找到的有用信息是在专利的背景信息部分。首先，在锂离子电池的电解液添加剂方面，正在测试PDO以延长其使用寿命。电解液添加剂的作用方式是与电解液溶液中的其他化学物质（如锂）反应，在电池的阳极上形成一层保护层，但也在较小程度上影响阴极。这层保护层阻止了电解液继续与电解液溶液反应，从而导致电池降解并迅速失去循环寿命。这意味着即使添加很少的添加剂也能极大地增加循环寿命。例如，在电池中添加1%的PDO可以使其循环寿命提高三倍，而这仅仅是1千克的电池单元的小于2克。

The second useful piece of information from the patent application was that although the current process is for producing PDO-type compounds result in high purity and high yields, they involve multiple steps that are time-consuming, inefficient, and expensive. But the inventor's proposal in this patent application is a synthesis method for PDO that uses chemicals that are widely available, cheaper, and with a process that involves one step rather than multiple steps. I'm not going to walk you through that process today for two reasons. First, it would involve walking through a recipe with ingredient names that would be unintelligible for most people. Second, it's because the real story for us as consumers or investors is how much PDO could increase the cycle life of batteries and how Don's lab has progressively validated its performance over the past four years. Let's get into that.

在专利申请中，第二个有用的信息是，尽管当前的生产PDO类化合物的方法能够得到高纯度和高产率，但该方法涉及多个步骤，耗时、低效且昂贵。但是专利申请人的建议是使用广泛可得、更便宜的化学物质进行PDO的合成，并且只需要一个步骤而不是多个步骤。今天我不打算详细介绍这个过程，有两个原因。首先，这涉及到一份配方，其中的成分名称对大多数人来说是无法理解的。其次，对我们作为消费者或投资者来说，真正重要的是PDO能够如何增加电池的循环寿命，以及Don的实验室如何在过去四年中不断验证其性能。让我们深入了解一下。

After reviewing the patent application, the next thing I did was run searches on PDO, Dioxazalone, and Don, which returned four research papers, three of which we'll look at today. Each of the papers was quite involved and they easily added up to thousands of hours of research. That is, Don's team pursued research on PDO quite aggressively, which they wouldn't have done if it didn't appear to hold some promise.

在审查专利申请后，我接下来做的事情是对PDO、Dioxazalone和Don进行搜索，结果返回了四篇研究论文，其中有三篇我们今天会仔细看。每篇论文都相当复杂，总共需要耗费数千个小时的研究时间。也就是说，Don的团队非常积极地进行了关于PDO的研究，如果这项研究似乎没有一些前景的话，他们不会这样做。

The first paper we'll cover, titled Dioxazalone and Nitrile Sulfite Electrolyte Additives for Lithium Ion Cells, was by David S. Hall at AL and was published in 2018. It compared three electrolyte additives that were new at the time, MDO, PDO, and BS. The conclusion was that of those three additives, PDO, shown here in purple, offered the greatest improvements to cycle life, especially when combined with other additives. However, the paper only illustrated that PDO is the best of the three new additives, not that it would perform well against the best additives on the market today, such as those used in what's often referred to as Jeff Don's Million Mile Battery Paper, which was published about four years ago. Furthermore, it only tested two standalone concentrations of PDO and three blends, so more research was needed.

我们将要讨论的第一篇论文名为《二氧杂氧醇和Nitrile Sulfite电解质添加剂对锂离子电池的影响》，由AL的David S. Hall发表于2018年。该论文比较了当时新出的三种电解质添加剂：MDO、PDO和BS。结论是在这三种添加剂中，PDO表现最好，特别是当与其他添加剂结合使用时，可以显著改善循环寿命。然而，该论文只证明了PDO是这三种新添加剂中最好的，而并未证明它能否与市场上最好的添加剂相抗衡，例如常被称为Jeff Don的百万英里电池论文中使用的添加剂，该论文发表于大约四年前。此外，该论文只测试了两种独立的PDO浓度和三种混合物，所以还需要进行更多的研究。

The next paper, titled Optimizing PDO as an Electrolyte Additive for Lithium Ion Cells, was by Toren Hines and was published in 2020. This paper tested three standalone concentrations of PDO rather than two, and nine blends rather than three. Let's walk through the results on screen. The lab scale cells they tested used an NMC 622 cathode, which is 60% nickel, 20% cobalt, and 20% manganese, and paired it with a graphite anode.

下一篇题为《将PDO优化作为锂离子电池电解质添加剂》的论文由Toren Hines撰写，并于2020年发表。该论文测试了三种独立的PDO浓度，而非两种，以及九种混合物，而非三种。让我们在屏幕上浏览一下结果。他们测试的实验室规模电池使用了NMC 622阴极，其中含有60%的镍，20%的钴和20%的锰，并与石墨阳极配对。

The cells were charged to 4.3 volts and discharged to 2.8 volts for each charged discharge cycle, and each cell was cycled until it degraded to 90% of its original energy capacity. The cell using no additive hit 90% in 200 cycles. The 2% vinylene carbonate reference cell hit 90% in 400 cycles, and the cell using 1% PDO and 2% DTD, or ethylene sulfate, took 1200 cycles to hit 90% capacity. That is, it performed six times better than the no additive control, and three times better than the vinylene carbonate or VC reference. As a side note, vinylene carbonate was chosen for the reference cell because it's typically the additive used in nickel-based commercial lithium ion battery cells. Again, bear in mind, these percentages are the percentage weight of the electrolyte solution, which is itself a fraction of the total battery weight. So we're talking about nearly insignificant quantities of material for a large effect on battery life.

每个充放电周期中，电池的电荷会充至4.3伏特，放电至2.8伏特，直到电池的能量容量降低到原始容量的90%为止。使用无添加剂的电池在200个周期内达到了90%。2%的乙烯碳酸酯参照电池在400个周期内达到了90%，而使用1%的PDO和2%的DTD或乙烯磺酸酯的电池需要1200个周期才能实现90%容量。也就是说，它比没有添加剂的电池性能提高了六倍，并且比乙烯碳酸酯参照电池性能提高了三倍。顺便提一下，乙烯碳酸酯被选择为参照电池，因为它通常是镍基商用锂离子电池中使用的添加剂。再次提醒，这些百分比是电解液溶液的重量百分比，而电解液溶液本身只占总电池重量的一小部分。因此，我们说的是在电池寿命上产生巨大影响的几乎可以忽略不计的物质量。

Next, how does the performance of the battery cells using the PDO additive compare to the additives used in the million-mile battery that Don's lab unveiled about four years ago? Before we get into that, let's start with a quick refresher. In the million-mile battery research paper, Don's lab used single-crystal cathode material, artificial graphite, and several combinations of electrolyte additives that included vinylene carbonate, ethylene sulfate, lithium-difluorophosphate, and fluorine ethylene carbonate. Those materials are well known to maximize battery life, and the purpose of the paper was to show the true potential of lithium-ion batteries if the right materials are used. Notably, no PDO was used. That's because in 2019, when the million-mile battery paper was released, PDO wasn't being used commercially because it was still relatively untested.

接下来，使用PDO添加剂的电池细胞性能与四年前Don实验室发布的百万英里电池使用的添加剂相比如何？在深入讨论之前，让我们简要回顾一下。在百万英里电池研究论文中，Don实验室使用了单晶正极材料、人造石墨以及包括乙烯碳酸酯、硫酸乙烯酯、氟化二氟磷酸锂和氟乙烯碳酸酯在内的多种电解质添加剂组合。这些材料被广泛认为能最大化电池寿命，论文的目的是展示如果使用正确的材料，锂离子电池的真正潜力。值得注意的是，没有使用PDO。这是因为在2019年百万英里电池论文发布时，PDO还没有商业化应用，因为它仍然相对未经过充分测试。

Moving along, the million-mile battery paper found that 2% vinylene carbonate with 1% ethylene sulfate and 2% fluorine carbonate with 1% lithium-difluorophosphate yielded the best results. Cells using those electrolyte blends were able to reach well over 3,000 cycles before hitting between 88 and 96% remaining energy capacity. That's as opposed to the PDO paper by Toren Hines, which used polycrystalline cathodes, artificial graphite, and electrolyte combinations that all involved the use of PDO. So obviously what was needed next was an apples-to-apples comparison of the electrolytes used in the million-mile battery paper and the PDO papers. By apples-to-apples comparison, I mean using the same cathodes and anodes under the same cycling conditions, but with different electrolyte blends.

通过研究可以发现，在移动中，百万英里电池论文发现，在2%的乙烯基碳酸酯和1%的乙烯基硫酸酯的混合电解液中，以及2%的氟基碳酸酯和1%的二氟磷酸锂的混合电解液中，所得到的效果最佳。使用这些电解液混合物的电池能够在达到88%到96%的剩余能量容量之前实现超过3,000次的循环。这与Toren Hines的PDO论文相反，后者使用了多晶电极材料、人造石墨以及涉及PDO使用的电解液组合。因此，接下来需要进行对比研究，将百万英里电池论文和PDO论文中所使用的电解液进行一一对比。所谓的“一一对比”，指的是在相同的循环条件下使用相同的阴极和阳极，但使用不同的电解液混合物。

That's exactly what Don's Lab did in 2022 in this paper by Dong Shui Uyang et al, titled the PDO electrolyte additive for NMC 622 and NMC811 lithium-ion cells. They did hundreds of tests of the best electrolyte blends from both the PDO papers and the million-mile battery paper in a broad range of voltages and temperatures.

这正是唐斯实验室在2022年所做的事情，通过董帅尤扬等人撰写的一篇名为“PDO电解质添加剂对NMC 622和NMC811锂离子电池”的论文。他们进行了数百次测试，针对不同电压和温度范围内PDO文件和百万英里电池文件中最佳电解质混合物进行了研究。

On screen is just a small portion of the tests that were run. For long-term cycling tests and the top graph of Panel B in Figure 14 is the most representative of real-world conditions. As you can see, the orange, green, and blue lines representing one vinylene carbonate dominant blend and two PDO dominant blends performed best. Of course, the best performing additive did vary with testing conditions.

屏幕上只显示了运行的一小部分测试。对于长期循环测试和图14B面板顶部的图表，它最能代表真实环境条件。正如您所看到的，橙色、绿色和蓝色线条代表的一个以乙烯碳酸酯为主的混合物和两个以PDO为主的混合物表现最佳。当然，具体的最佳添加剂在测试条件下可能会有所不同。

With all tests considered, the conclusion was that the best performing blends of PDO didn't perform as well as the reference electrolyte blends that were used in the million-mile battery paper for both cycling and high-temperature storage. However, in specific conditions, like the long-term cycling of NMC811 battery cells, a blend of 2% PDO and 1% LFO, or lithium-diflorophosphate, performed well and potentially makes a good candidate for battery cells using high nickel chemistries.

经过考虑了所有的测试，得出的结论是，最好表现的PDO混合物在循环和高温储存方面都不如百万英里电池论文中使用的参考电解质混合物表现出色。然而，在特定条件下，比如长期循环的NMC811电池单元中，2%PDO和1%LFO（草酸四氟磷酯锂）的混合物表现良好，可能成为使用高镍化学成分的电池单元的良好选择。

What all this means is that Tesla now has another electrolyte additive in their arsenal. That, in turn, will allow them to use the best electrolyte blend for each use case, whether that be a Model Y, Robotaxi, or grid storage.

所有这些意味着，特斯拉现在在他们的武器库中又有了一种电解质添加剂。这反过来将使他们能够根据不同的用途情况选择最佳的电解质混合物，无论是用于Model Y、Robotaxi还是电网储能。

As a final note, I still see some areas of opportunity in the PDO research, and I don't think Jeff Don's lab nor Tesla will stop here with PDO. Why do I say that? First, in the final paper from 2022, they used a cathode that was a blend of single and polycrystalline materials, whereas the images from Battery Day indicate that Tesla appears to intend to use polycrystalline cathodes, which might favor using PDO. So, it's one more variable to test.

最后，我仍然看到了对于PDO研究的一些机会，并且我不认为Jeff Don的实验室或特斯拉会在PDO上止步不前。为什么这么说呢？首先，在2022年的最终论文中，他们使用了一种由单晶和多晶材料混合而成的阴极，而Battery Day的图片显示特斯拉似乎打算使用多晶阴极，这可能有利于使用PDO。因此，这是又一个要测试的变量。

Second, Tesla and the entire industry intends to use higher percentages of nickel beyond the 60-80% nickel cathodes that are common today. A common theme across the PDO papers, and confirmed in the 2022 paper, was that PDO performs better with high nickel cathodes.

其次，特斯拉和整个行业都打算使用比目前普遍使用的60-80%镍正极更高比例的镍。在PDO论文中一个共同的主题，并且在2022年的论文中得到了确认，就是高镍正极在PDO表现上更好。

Third, the paper from 2022 found that in some instances, 95% purity PDO actually resulted in better cycle life than 99.8% purity PDO. However, the battery cells they used for the long-term cycling testing of the PDO blends used 99.8% pure PDO rather than 95%. Presumably to eliminate the impurities as a variable. That means there's another variable to test here, because there may be a chemical in the impurities that has a positive impact on cycle life.

第三，2022年的一篇论文发现，在某些情况下，95%纯度的PDO实际上比99.8%纯度的PDO具有更好的循环寿命。然而，在他们对PDO混合物进行长期循环测试时，使用的电池电芯是99.8%纯的PDO，而不是95%。这可能是为了将杂质排除在变量之外。这意味着这里还有另一个要测试的变量，因为杂质中可能含有对循环寿命有积极影响的化学物质。

If we take all those factors into account, with a full polycrystalline high nickel cathode, we might see even better results than the ones we walk through today.

如果我们考虑到所有这些因素，使用全晶体高镍阳极，我们可能会看到比今天更好的结果。

In summary, Tesla's new patent application, courtesy of Tesla's research partner Jeff Don, is for a manufacturing process for the electrolyte additive PDO. Don's lab has devoted thousands of hours and several years evaluating PDO, and in some cases it appears to be competitive with the reference electrolyte blends that were used for the million-mile battery. If and when these additive blends are used in Tesla's batteries, it should significantly improve their cycle life, possibly to the point where the batteries will outlast the vehicles and grid storage products that they're used in.

总之，特斯拉的新专利申请来自特斯拉的研究合作伙伴杰夫·唐，申请的是一种用于电解质添加剂PDO的制造工艺。唐的实验室花费了数千小时和几年的时间来评估PDO，在某些情况下，它似乎与用于百万英里电池的参考电解质配方具有竞争力。如果特斯拉的电池中使用这些添加剂混合物，它们的循环寿命应该会显著提高，可能达到甚至超过其所用于的车辆和电网储能产品的使用寿命。

For me, the only question that remains is, why hasn't that happened already? The research for the PDO papers was initiated at least five years ago, and for the million-mile battery paper four years ago. I can think of several reasons why Tesla hasn't used these electrolyte additives and their products yet, but it's unclear to me which is the most likely.

对我来说，唯一仍未解答的问题是，为什么这件事还没有发生呢？有关PDO文件的研究至少在五年前启动，而关于百万英里电池的文件则是四年前开始的。我能想到几个原因，为什么特斯拉还没有使用这些电解质添加剂和相应产品，但我不确定哪个可能性最大。

First, the mundane and probable answer is that the research is ongoing, and there's more testing needed to validate chemicals like PDO for use in Tesla's products. Bear in mind that Don's lab was still running comparison tests of these chemicals in 2022.

首先，平凡且可能的答案是该研究仍在进行中，还需要更多的测试来验证像PDO这样的化学物质是否适用于特斯拉的产品。请记住，唐的实验室在2022年仍在进行这些化学物质的比较测试。

Second, on that note, it could be that the testing is complete and now they're working on an industrialization plan. To bring these chemicals to market, it would take at least two years from planning to production.

其次，在这一点上，可能是测试工作已经完成，现在他们正在制定一个产业化计划。为了将这些化学物质推向市场，至少需要从规划到生产的两年时间。

Third, the new electrolyte additives could negatively impact the battery cells in ways that aren't apparent from the research we've seen so far, but that Tesla has discovered in their own labs and testing.

第三，新的电解质添加剂可能会对电池电芯产生负面影响，这些影响从目前我们所见的研究中并不明显，但特斯拉在自己的实验室和测试中已经发现了。

Fourth, it could be that Tesla is already dealing with so many variables with the 4680 production ramp that they're waiting until the ramp has hit full stride before they make tweaks to the chemistry.

第四，特斯拉可能已经在应对4680电池生产扩增所涉及的众多变数，他们可能会等待生产扩展达到全面运作状态后再对化学成分进行微调。

Fifth, it could be that Tesla is already using these additives, but only for products that the public isn't able to track as closely, like grid storage products, which have a greater need for a high cycle life.

第五，可能是特斯拉已经开始使用这些添加剂了，但只限于公众无法密切追踪的产品，比如电网储能产品，这些产品对高循环寿命有更高需求。

In my view, the first and second reasons are the most likely, and I expect the great work that Don's team has done will eventually make it into Tesla's products. There's no way to know when that could be, but if you're in the battery industry and you have some insights here, let us know in the comments below.

在我看来，第一和第二个原因最有可能，并且我期望唐的团队所做的伟大工作最终会应用在特斯拉的产品中。我们无法知道这会在什么时候发生，但如果你在电池行业，并且对此有一些见解，请在下方评论区与我们分享。

If you enjoyed this video, please consider supporting the channel by using the links in the description. Also, consider following me on X. I often use X as a testbed for sharing ideas, and X subscribers like my Patreon supporters generally get access to my videos a week early.

如果你喜欢这个视频，请考虑通过描述中的链接支持该频道。此外，请考虑在X上关注我。我经常在X上用来测试分享观点，并且像我的Patreon支持者一样，X的订阅者通常可以提前一周看到我的视频。

A special thanks to my YouTube members, X subscribers, and all the patrons listed in the credits. I appreciate all of your support, and thanks for tuning in.

特别感谢我的YouTube会员，X订阅者以及所有列在贡献者名单中的赞助者们。我非常感激你们的支持，谢谢你们的收看。