How to Form and Cycle Lithium-Ion Cells

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+ Charge-Discharge, Li-ion Cell Formation, and Test Solution

Measuring lithium-ion cells with a scalable, adaptable charge-discharge solution

Electric battery lithium-ion cell chemistry is rapidly evolving to offer larger capacities, faster charging, and lower-cost cells, often using locally sourced materials. To rapidly prototype cells, manufacturers need a flexible formation solution. Forming cells requires a multistep charge-discharge process, creating a high-quality solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) layer. A formation plan uses many cycles of varying time and charging currents.

Once a cell forms, several tests characterize its performance and determine its cycle lifetime. Cycle lifetime depends on charge rates, depth of charge, and environmental temperature. Fully understanding a cell's cycle lifetime is a time-consuming process but one that enables original equipment manufacturers to make critical trade-offs between performance and longevity. A cell cycling solution must quickly adapt to new chemistries and high-power cells. It must also scale to handle increasing cell volumes.

Lithium-ion cell formation and cycling solution

Forming lithium-ion cells requires a highly scalable, adaptable charge-discharge solution. The Keysight charge-discharge system addresses the formation and test requirements of Li-ion cell manufacturing.

The charge-discharge platform's modular design supports cells requiring maximum currents ranging from ± 6 A to ± 800 A, with up to 256 cells or channels per chassis. It can accurately measure low-level self-discharge currents with an uncertainty of ± (0.30% + 250 nA). In addition, the charge-discharge platform quickly matches the voltage applied to the cell (± 1.25 μV), minimizing new charge or discharge and unwanted settling currents that could otherwise mask the self-discharge current you are measuring.

The solution enables you to quickly deploy different channel configurations as your cell requirements change and capacities grow. Regeneration improves efficiency and lowers operational costs.

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