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Technological change in lithium iron phosphate battery: the key-route main path analysis

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Abstract

Technological change evolves along a cyclical divergent-convergent pattern in knowledge diffusion paths. Technological divergence occurs as a breakthrough innovation, or discontinuity, inaugurating an era of ferment in which several competing technologies emerge and gradually advance. Technological convergence occurs as a series of evolutionary, variant changes that are gradually combined or fused together to open the industry to successive dominant designs or guideposts. To visualize such a pattern of technological evolution, we choose to study lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery technology through an extension of the citation-based main path analysis, namely the key-route main path analysis. The key-route method discloses the main paths that travel through a specified number of key citations. The resulting multiple paths reveal the structure of the knowledge diffusion paths. The citation network is constructed from 1,531 academic articles on LFP battery technology published between 1997 and early 2012. Findings illustrate that LFP battery technology has completed two full technological cycles and is in the middle of the third cycle.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Technology Management, National Tsing Hua University, 101 Section 2, Kuang-Fu Road, Hsinchu, 30013, Taiwan

    Shih-Chang Hung

  2. Graduate Institute of Technology Management, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, 43, Section 4 Keelung Road, Taipei, 10607, Taiwan

    John S. Liu & Yu-Chiang Tseng

  3. College of Management, Yuan Ze University, 135 Yuan-Tung Road, Chung-Li, 32003, Taiwan

    Louis Y. Y. Lu

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  1. Shih-Chang Hung
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  2. John S. Liu
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  3. Louis Y. Y. Lu
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  4. Yu-Chiang Tseng
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Correspondence to Shih-Chang Hung.

Appendix

Appendix

See Appendix Tables 1 and 2.

Table 1 List of the top 60 links
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Table 2 Papers on the key-route main paths (based on the top 60 links)
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Hung, SC., Liu, J.S., Lu, L.Y.Y. et al. Technological change in lithium iron phosphate battery: the key-route main path analysis. Scientometrics 100, 97–120 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-014-1276-9

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