Influence of operational condition on lithium plating for commercial lithium-ion batteries – Electrochemical experiments and post-mortem-analysis

The lifetime and safety of lithium-ion batteries are key requirements for successful market introduction of electro mobility. Especially charging at low temperature and fast charging, known to provoke lithium plating, is an important issue for automotive engineers. Lithium plating, leading both to ageing as well as safety risks, is known to play a crucial role in system design of the application. To gain knowledge of different influence factors on lithium plating, low-temperature ageing tests are performed in this work. Commercial lithium-ion batteries of various types are tested under various operational conditions such as temperature, current, state of charge, charging strategy as well as state of health. To analyse the ageing behaviour, capacity fade and resistance increase are tracked over lifetime. The results of this large experimental survey on lithium plating provide support for the design of operation strategies for the implementation in battery management systems. To further investigate the underlying degradation mechanisms, differential voltage curves and impedance spectra are analysed and a post-mortem analysis of anode degradation is performed for a selected technology. The results confirm the deposition of metallic lithium or lithium compounds in the porous structure and suggest a strongly inhomogeneous deposition over the electrode thickness with a dense deposition layer close to the separator for the considered cell. It is shown that this inhomogeneous deposition can even lead to loss of active material. The plurality of the investigated technologies demonstrates large differences between different technologies concerning low-temperature behaviour and gives insight to the impact of cell properties. For the sample of cells considered in this work, cells rated to provide high power are found to be subject to faster degradation at low temperatures compared to high-energy cells, probably due to little self-heating. For application this result shows that cells designed for high current rates are not necessarily providing a good low-temperature performance.

[1]  Yang Gao,et al.  Lithium-ion battery aging mechanisms and life model under different charging stresses , 2017 .

[2]  Thomas Waldmann,et al.  Optimization of Charging Strategy by Prevention of Lithium Deposition on Anodes in high-energy Lithium-ion Batteries – Electrochemical Experiments , 2015 .

[3]  Stephen J. Harris,et al.  Direct In Situ Observation and Numerical Simulations of Non-Shrinking-Core Behavior in an MCMB Graphite Composite Electrode , 2012 .

[4]  U. Landau,et al.  Rapid Charging of Lithium-Ion Batteries Using Pulsed Currents A Theoretical Analysis , 2006 .

[5]  John T. Vaughey,et al.  Overcharge Effect on Morphology and Structure of Carbon Electrodes for Lithium-Ion Batteries , 2012 .

[6]  F. E. Little,et al.  Low-Temperature Characterization of Lithium-Ion Carbon Anodes via Microperturbation Measurement , 2002 .

[7]  Jiang Fan,et al.  Studies on Charging Lithium-Ion Cells at Low Temperatures , 2006 .

[8]  M. Dubarry,et al.  Fast charging technique for high power LiFePO4 batteries: A mechanistic analysis of aging , 2016 .

[9]  M. Wohlfahrt‐Mehrens,et al.  Detection of Li Deposition by Glow Discharge Optical Emission Spectroscopy in Post-Mortem Analysis , 2015 .

[10]  B. Ratnakumar,et al.  Irreversible Capacities of Graphite in Low‐Temperature Electrolytes for Lithium‐Ion Batteries , 1999 .

[11]  S. Surampudi,et al.  Performance characteristics of lithium ion cells at low temperatures , 2002, Seventeenth Annual Battery Conference on Applications and Advances. Proceedings of Conference (Cat. No.02TH8576).

[12]  Andreas Jossen,et al.  Charging protocols for lithium-ion batteries and their impact on cycle life—An experimental study with different 18650 high-power cells , 2016 .

[13]  Andreas Jossen,et al.  Lithium plating in lithium-ion batteries at sub-ambient temperatures investigated by in situ neutron diffraction , 2014 .

[14]  Charles W. Monroe,et al.  Direct in situ measurements of Li transport in Li-ion battery negative electrodes , 2009 .

[15]  Ralph E. White,et al.  Capacity Fade Mechanisms and Side Reactions in Lithium‐Ion Batteries , 1998 .

[16]  Marshall C. Smart,et al.  Effects of Electrolyte Composition on Lithium Plating in Lithium-Ion Cells , 2011 .

[17]  P. Heitjans,et al.  Inhomogeneous degradation of graphite anodes in automotive lithium ion batteries under low-temperature pulse cycling conditions , 2016 .

[18]  Dennis W. Dees,et al.  Low-temperature study of lithium-ion cells using a LiySn micro-reference electrode , 2007 .

[19]  Marc Doyle,et al.  Mathematical Modeling of the Lithium Deposition Overcharge Reaction in Lithium‐Ion Batteries Using Carbon‐Based Negative Electrodes , 1999 .

[20]  Shengbo Zhang.  The effect of the charging protocol on the cycle life of a Li-ion battery , 2006 .

[21]  Thomas Waldmann,et al.  Interplay of Operational Parameters on Lithium Deposition in Lithium-Ion Cells: Systematic Measurements with Reconstructed 3-Electrode Pouch Full Cells , 2016 .

[22]  J. Owen,et al.  A Graphical Aid to Evaluation of Carbon‐Based Li‐Ion Electrodes , 1997 .

[23]  J. Sakamoto,et al.  The Limits of Low‐Temperature Performance of Li‐Ion Cells , 2000 .

[24]  Andreas Gruhle,et al.  A new method for detecting lithium plating by measuring the cell thickness , 2014 .

[25]  Michael A. Danzer,et al.  Lithium plating in a commercial lithium-ion battery - A low-temperature aging study , 2015 .

[26]  Jay F. Whitacre,et al.  Electrochemical performance and kinetics of Li1+x(Co1/3Ni1/3Mn1/3)1−xO2 cathodes and graphite anodes in low-temperature electrolytes , 2007 .

[27]  Kevin L. Gering,et al.  Differential voltage analyses of high-power lithium-ion cells: 3. Another anode phenomenon , 2005 .

[28]  Gaurav Jain,et al.  Material and Design Options for Avoiding Lithium Plating during Charging , 2010 .

[29]  Vincent Chevrier,et al.  In Situ Detection of Lithium Plating on Graphite Electrodes by Electrochemical Calorimetry , 2013 .

[30]  Marshall C. Smart,et al.  Lithium Plating Behavior in Lithium-Ion Cells , 2010 .

[31]  Torsten Scherer,et al.  Lithium dendrite and solid electrolyte interphase investigation using OsO4 , 2014 .

[32]  Moses Ender,et al.  In situ detection of lithium metal plating on graphite in experimental cells , 2015 .

[33]  Hsiu-Ping Lin,et al.  Low-Temperature Behavior of Li-Ion Cells , 2001 .

[34]  M. Wohlfahrt‐Mehrens,et al.  Temperature dependent ageing mechanisms in Lithium-ion batteries – A Post-Mortem study , 2014 .

[35]  John Newman,et al.  Two-Dimensional Modeling of Lithium Deposition during Cell Charging , 2008 .

[36]  W. Bessler,et al.  Low-temperature charging of lithium-ion cells part I: Electrochemical modeling and experimental investigation of degradation behavior , 2014 .

[37]  Marius Bauer,et al.  Voltage relaxation and impedance spectroscopy as in-operando methods for the detection of lithium plating on graphitic anodes in commercial lithium-ion cells , 2016 .

[38]  Michael A. Danzer,et al.  Nondestructive detection, characterization, and quantification of lithium plating in commercial lithium-ion batteries , 2014 .

[39]  Kang Xu,et al.  Study of the charging process of a LiCoO2-based Li-ion battery , 2006 .

[40]  J. C. Burns,et al.  In-Situ Detection of Lithium Plating Using High Precision Coulometry , 2015 .

[41]  S. Raël,et al.  Physical characterization of the charging process of a Li-ion battery and prediction of Li plating by electrochemical modelling , 2014 .

[42]  I. Bloom,et al.  The effect of charging rate on the graphite electrode of commercial lithium-ion cells: A post-mortem study , 2016 .