Differential voltage analysis for battery manufacturing process control

TL;DR

This paper introduces an advanced differential voltage analysis method for battery manufacturing, enhancing interpretability, reproducibility, and automation to improve process control using voltage curves.

Contribution

It expands existing DVA techniques with new metrics and reformulations that address reproducibility and interpretability in manufacturing diagnostics.

Findings

New metrics for lithium consumption and electrode ratios introduced.

Reformulated model accounts for the inaccessible lithium problem.

Guidelines for data collection impact on method reproducibility.

Abstract

Voltage-based battery metrics are ubiquitous and essential in battery manufacturing diagnostics. They enable electrochemical "fingerprinting" of batteries at the end of the manufacturing line and are naturally scalable, since voltage data is already collected as part of the formation process which is the last step in battery manufacturing. Yet, despite their prevalence, interpretations of voltage-based metrics are often ambiguous and require expert judgment. In this work, we present a method for collecting and analyzing full cell near-equilibrium voltage curves for end-of-line manufacturing process control. The method builds on existing literature on differential voltage analysis (DVA or dV/dQ) by expanding the method formalism through the lens of reproducibility, interpretability, and automation. Our model revisions introduce several new derived metrics relevant to manufacturing process control, including lithium consumed during formation and the practical negative-to-positive ratio, which complement standard metrics such as positive and negative electrode capacities. To facilitate method reproducibility, we reformulate the model to account for the "inaccessible lithium problem" which quantifies the numerical differences between modeled versus true values for electrode capacities and stoichiometries. We finally outline key data collection considerations, including C-rate and charging direction for both full cell and half cell datasets, which may impact method reproducibility. This work highlights the opportunities for leveraging voltage-based electrochemical metrics for online battery manufacturing process control.