Patent 7736806 was granted and assigned to Panasonic on June, 2010 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A negative electrode material for non-aqueous electrolyte secondary batteries, characterized in that the negative electrode material comprises a composite particle including solid phases A and B, the solid phase A being dispersed in the solid phase B, and the ratio (IA/IB) of the maximum diffracted X-ray intensity (IA) attributed to the solid phase A to the maximum diffracted X-ray intensity (IB) attributed to the solid phase B satisfies 0.001≦IA/IB≦0.1, in terms of a diffraction line obtained by a wide-angle X-ray diffraction measurement of the composite particle.