Chemical and electrochemical analysis of commercial lithium-ion battery cells
In this new millennium, we are beginning to realize that fossil fuels aren't a sustainable energy source anymore. One of the biggest consumers of energy and hydrocarbon fuels is the sector of electromobility, which is thus seeing some of the biggest efforts toward improvement. One of the most promising energy media for personal transport of the future are lithium-ion batteries, whose development is currently on the rise. The biggest benefit of the use of electrochemical storage devices in vehicles is, that we can move the sources of pollution, which result from burning of the fossil fuels, out of urban areas. Additional benefit comes from centralization of pollution sources, because of which better pollutant control and even greenhouse gas uptake is possible. In the future it is expected that vehicle electrification will enable a gradual transition to 'green' sources of energy, which output energy in the form of electricity.
One of the prevailing trends in the development of higher performance batteries is the increase in nickel concentration in cell cathodic materials. [1, 2] Because of this, our research group conducted a research of available commercial cells and selected LG HG2 cell in 18650 cylindrical format as our representative test cell which contains nickel rich cathodic material and is appropriate for testing on our existing machines because of its format. In the continuation of this work, I have presented some basic analytical techniques, with which we have obtained information about the response of the cells to simulated wear. I have also described methods and contraptions that we use to improve the accuracy, repeatability and safety of our measurements.
We have encountered a special problem, when opening the hard cell housings, which is needed for obtaining the samples of the active cell components for various chemical and physical analysis. To this end, we have constructed several accessories and procedures, which are described in this work.
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