from chemistry to pack
AION Engineering INC For years, battery engineers have relied on the Single-Particle Model with Electrolyte (SPME) as the industry standard for cell simulation. SPME operates on a convenient mathematical simplification: it collapses the entire complex, porous electrode into a single representative particle. At low C-rates, this volume-averaged macroscopic assumption holds. But when a cell is … Read more
Jerry Wan’s post (right) asks whether cell design has a “golden ratio” for aspect ratio. He concludes that there isn’t a universal one, and that’s right. But the reasons are worth working through, because the best shape changes completely depending on where the tabs are and which edge the heat leaves by. A ratio that … Read more
AION Engineering INC In battery continuum modelling, few parameters are as universally accepted—and as fundamentally flawed for modern cells—as a Bruggeman exponent of 1.5. While it is widely understood that tortuosity and porosity are distinct structural metrics, the industry consistently defaults to this idealized constant to bridge the gap between them. To understand why modern … Read more
Quick facts The prompt for this piece Prof Louis Piper (WMG/Warwick, Faraday Institution) posted a summary of this paper on LinkedIn, describing work from the Faraday Institution’s LEAP project led by Eleni Fiamegkou and Daniela Proprentner. His framing of the result is worth repeating directly, because it’s the thesis the underlying data set out to … Read more
AION Engineering INC While silicon (SiOx/SiC/Si) based anodes skyrocket battery capacity, their swelling character reaching up to 300% volume expansion transforms cell design from a purely electrochemical challenge into a brutal mechanical packaging problem. It is not just about how much lithium the active material can store; how the casing structurally resists (its rigidity) when … Read more
Single side busbars give you some advantages in designing cylindrical cells, but we have always known there is a resistance increase. Single Side 21700 Busbars If we look at the section through the cylindrical cell we see that the main can of the cell is the negative electrode. This can gets crimped onto the top-cap … Read more
AION Engineering INC No matter how optimized your internal cell structure, electrode design, or N/P ratio might be, the ultimate bottleneck in freezing temperatures is the electrolyte. Just as a flawless, 1,000-horsepower engine is utterly useless if the diesel in its fuel tank has frozen, a lithium-ion battery faces the exact same fate. The electrolyte … Read more
A new Nature Energy paper puts a number on it I’ve written before about cell electrode pressure and how it’s applied and lost across a module’s life, and about the practical business of mapping pressure distribution across a pouch cell in operando. Both of those pieces stopped short of answering the question every pack designer … Read more
AION Engineering INC In lithium-ion batteries, electrode performance is governed not only by material chemistry but by the three-dimensional microstructure formed by particles, pores, binder, and conductive additives. Before production begins, this microstructure already defines how ions and electrons will move through the electrode. Once manufacturing starts, many of these structural characteristics can no longer … Read more
The Hidden Hero of Electrode Manufacturing AION Engineering INC In Lithium-ion battery production, the electrode coating process is a defining step for the cell’s final performance. However, achieving a pristine coating isn’t just about machine settings; it begins with the correct formulation of the slurry structure. In this article, we examine slurry viscosity not merely … Read more