What are the advantages and disadvantages of Lithium Polymer battery?

Lithium-ion Polymer batteries differ from Lithium-ion batteries only in construction, they can be made by same chemistry, so they have almost same performance. However, Lithium Polymer has its own characteristics:

Lithium Polymer battery advantages:

☆ Better safety performance - Lithium-ion polymer batteries with aluminum composite flexible packaging in the structure, differ from liquid metal case of batteries, in the event of a safety hazard, liquid batteries easy explosion, but Lithium polymer battery mostly can be swelled to avoid explosion.

☆ Flexible sizes and diversified shape - Lithium-ion polymer cells can be ultra-thin with 1mm thickness and assemble into a credit card. Also they can be curved, rounded or other special structure.

☆ Customizable - There is no standard Lithium-ion polymer cells like Lithium-ion 18650, 26650, 14500..., but they can be built with any sizes to fit into your application. And the low cost for developing a new model.

There are also other advantages same as Lithium-ion battery:

☆ High energy density

☆ Small and light

☆ Low self-discharge

☆ Non memory effect

☆ Quick charging

☆ High open-circuit voltage

☆ Long service life

☆ Low maintenance

☆ No requirement for priming

Lithium Polymer battery disadvantages:

* Swelling or meteorism - Because of special structure and soft packaging, Lithium Polymer cells has a probabilistic of swelling in about 3‰, the cell should be shielded once swelled.

* Higher cost than Lithium-ion - As there is no full-automatic equipment for mass production, the production cost of Lithium Polymer battery is much higher than Lithium-ion cells.

Other disadvantages are same as Lithium-ion battery:

* Protection required

* Aging effect

* Transportation problems

* Deep discharge

* Safety concerns

* Sensitivity to high temperature