Author: Professor Yijin Liu
One of the slowest steps in battery manufacturing is electrolyte wetting. After you inject the liquid, you normally have to wait tens of hours for it to soak into the porous structure. Not exactly the most efficient process.
But here’s the funny part—when we wash dishes, we never wait for water to slowly creep into a sponge. We just give it a squeeze, and it wets almost instantly.
So we tried the same idea for batteries. By applying controlled pressure fluctuations, we can significantly speed up wetting (less than one hour). Turns out, a little “squeeze” goes a long way—even for batteries.
This work published in Journal of ECS – The Electrochemical Society features our collaborative effort at The University of Texas at Austin to improve and accelerate the battery manufacturing protocols.
The paper is led by three students, Mr. Wenlong Li from my group, Mr. Zishuo Zhao from Prof. Hadi Khani’s group, and Mr. Ayrton Yanyachi from Prof. O.A. (DK) Ezekoye’s group, at the Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin.
Our industry partners include Dr. Saravanan Kuppan of Rivian, Dr. Zhao Liu of Thermo Fisher Scientific, and Dr. Jigang Zhou of General Motors.
The core facilities at Texas Materials Institute, The University of Texas at Austin and at UT’s Battery Fabrication and Testing Facility were essential to this research. My group’s effort in this work was supported by National Science Foundation (NSF).
References
- Wenlong Li, Zishuo Zhao, Ayrton Yanyachi, Saravana Kuppan, Zhao Liu, Jigang Zhou, Ofodike Ezekoye, Hadi Khani and Yijin Liu, Sponge-Inspired Pressing Approach to Facilitate Electrolyte Wetting in Li-Ion Pouch Cells, Journal of The Electrochemical Society, Volume 172, Number 9
See also: Fast Formation Protocols