Reduced Manufacturing Cost for Li-ion Batteries

Lithium-ion batteries are being increasingly deployed in DoD applications as the result of their very high energy and power densities, but their manufacturing costs are high because of relatively long production timescales, The primary factor limiting throughput in Li-ion cell production is the long time required for the formation and aging sequence in which cells are cycled to render the cell operational and are then aged for a period of days or weeks in an effort to screen for the presence of internal short circuits. CAMX Power has developed a safety technology for detection of nascent internal short circuits in batteries, and proposes to adapt that technology to the lithium-ion cell manufacturing environment so as to reduce formation and aging time and thus increase production throughput. Further, we are proposing to improve the effectiveness of manufacturing quality control procedures to screen for internal short circuits.