Research supported by the Office of Naval Research and conducted by HNEI researchers, led by Matthieu Dubarry, is featured on the Energies journal cover. This research paper “Intrinsic Variability in the Degradation of a Batch of Commercial 18650 Lithium-Ion Cells” is included in the journal’s May 2018 issue and is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/en11051031.
Lithium-ion battery manufacturing is a multi-step process involving synthesis, mixing, casting, calendering, winding, soldering, packaging, wetting and sealing. Each step has a small intrinsic variability which contributes to initial cell-to-cell performance variations, but can also affect durability. This study quantified these impacts and determined that: (1) durability was not correlated with the initial cell-to-cell variations; and (2) cell-to-cell variations increased dramatically with cycling.
