Jonas Pfaff , Sebastian Schopferer , Henning Markötter , Alexander Rack , Giovanni Bruno , Anita Schmidt , Tim Tichter , Nils Böttcher
{"title":"High-speed synchrotron radiography of nail penetration-induced thermal runaway: Understanding the explosive behavior of commercial sodium-ion batteries with NFM cathode","authors":"Jonas Pfaff , Sebastian Schopferer , Henning Markötter , Alexander Rack , Giovanni Bruno , Anita Schmidt , Tim Tichter , Nils Böttcher","doi":"10.1016/j.powera.2025.100188","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.powera.2025.100188","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The dynamics of mechanically initiated thermal runaway (TR) events in cylindrical 18650 cells with NFM (Na(Ni<sub>1/3</sub>Fe<sub>1/3</sub>Mn<sub>1/3</sub>)O<sub>2</sub>), LFP (LiFePO<sub>4</sub>), and NMC532 (LiNi<sub>1/2</sub>Mn<sub>1/3</sub>Co<sub>1/5</sub>O<sub>2</sub>) cathode chemistries were investigated using high-speed synchrotron X-ray imaging. Structural similarity index measures (SSIM) were employed to identify and track rapid structural changes. In this manner, thermal decompositions and internal propagation dynamics, influencing the safety mechanisms of the cells, were studied. This lead to two major findings: (I) Among NFM, LFP, and NMC532 cells, the TR-characteristics differ significantly in temperature and internal propagation speed. Internal safety mechanisms appear, however, visually similar. Among all samples, LFP cells exhibit higher safety performance concerning the initiation of TR by nail penetration and the progression of TR. (II) The NFM cells used in this study displayed an almost explosive TR. This finding appears counterintuitive on a first glance, since sodium-ion batteries are usually considered safe. High-speed imaging revealed that the explosive TR is not necessarily caused by the thermochemical decomposition reactions, but rather by a failure of the venting mechanism. This results in a significant pressure buildup within the cell upon TR initiation and eventually a severely violent TR. These results underline that battery safety depends on many factors and not solely on optimized cell chemistries or materials.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":34318,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Power Sources Advances","volume":"36 ","pages":"Article 100188"},"PeriodicalIF":4.6,"publicationDate":"2025-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145222154","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"From mine to manufacturer: Assessing transport impacts in the battery supply chain","authors":"Jesper Frost Thomsen , Simon Lux","doi":"10.1016/j.powera.2025.100187","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.powera.2025.100187","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Behind battery manufacturing lies a global supply chain that spans multiple continents. This study aims to examine the implications of the global battery supply chain from a transport perspective. A supply chain and market analysis serve as the foundation for simulating transportation within the supply chain, offering insights into the impact of transport on emissions and costs associated with battery cell manufacturing in Europe and China across various scenarios. The results indicate that (1) for Chinese and European cells, similar transport impacts are calculated if a final EV production facility in Europe is modelled; (2) transport-related emissions account for up to 5.2% of total supply chain emissions; (3) optimizing the supply chain to target the lowest transport-related emissions can result in savings of over 40% and 50% for transport-related emissions and costs respectively. The findings provide insight into the significance of transportation in designing and analyzing the battery supply chain.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":34318,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Power Sources Advances","volume":"36 ","pages":"Article 100187"},"PeriodicalIF":4.6,"publicationDate":"2025-09-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145108304","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Leonard Kurz , Simon Glöser-Chahoud , Ralf Wörner , Frederik Reichert
{"title":"Ex-ante environmental impact analysis of reactivation methods in the direct recycling of cathode active materials from spent lithium-ion batteries","authors":"Leonard Kurz , Simon Glöser-Chahoud , Ralf Wörner , Frederik Reichert","doi":"10.1016/j.powera.2025.100189","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.powera.2025.100189","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Recycling is crucial for resilient value chains for lithium (Li)-ion batteries, as is ecological impact analysis, to ensure the sustainability of battery-recycling technologies. Early ecological assessments lead to greater potential for optimization and easier adaptations for the reduction of environmental impacts. In this study, we present an ex-ante life cycle assessment (LCA) of reactivation strategies for separated cathode active materials from end-of-life Li-ion batteries for direct battery recycling. Reactivation includes impurity removal, compensation for Li deficiency by relithiation, and subsequent recrystallization. In this LCA, we focus on the relithiation process as it is decisive for the variance in the reactivation procedure. Our results show that hydrothermal reactivation is associated with the lowest global warming potential across all cathode chemistries. In terms of the abiotic resource depletion (of elements) and human toxicity, solid-state reactivation has the least impacts, followed by hydrothermal relithiation. To better evaluate the ecological relevance of reactivation, we conducted a life cycle impact assessment for the entire direct recycling process chain using two different separation technologies to recover the end-of-life cathode active material. The first separation process is based on semi-automated disassembly, dismantling, and subsequent waterjet delamination of the active material from the collector foil. In the second process, the battery (modules) is mechanically shredded in an atmosphere of inert gas and subsequently fractionated. This enabled us to identify relithiation as a hotspot in the direct recycling process. On average, relithiation is responsible for 40–43 % of the global warming potential. The early ecological analysis proves to be extremely useful in this context, as the greenhouse potential in the overall process chain of strategy.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":34318,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Power Sources Advances","volume":"36 ","pages":"Article 100189"},"PeriodicalIF":4.6,"publicationDate":"2025-09-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145108305","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Öykü Simsek , Alessandro Innocenti , Isaac Álvarez Moisés , Philip Zimmer , Ziyuan Lyu , Simon Muench , Jean-François Gohy , Dominic Bresser , Ulrich S. Schubert
{"title":"Novel dopamine-containing gel polymer electrolytes for Li-organic batteries","authors":"Öykü Simsek , Alessandro Innocenti , Isaac Álvarez Moisés , Philip Zimmer , Ziyuan Lyu , Simon Muench , Jean-François Gohy , Dominic Bresser , Ulrich S. Schubert","doi":"10.1016/j.powera.2025.100186","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.powera.2025.100186","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We present a new gel polymer electrolyte (GPE) based on a dopamine-containing comonomer for lithium-organic battery cells. First, several liquid electrolyte solutions composed of an ionic liquid and a lithium salt were prepared and tested in Li-organic cells with poly(2,2,6,6-tetramethyl-1-piperidinyloxy-4-yl methacrylate) (PTMA) as the positive electrode active material to evaluate the compatibility. Among them, ionic liquid electrolyte (ILE) (1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium bis(fluorosulfonyl)imide (EMIMFSI):lithium bis(fluorosulfonyl)imide (LiFSI), 0.8:0.2, mol:mol) was found to lead to the highest specific capacity (63.5 mAh g<sup>−1</sup> at 1C). The polymer matrix composed of benzyl methacrylate (BnMA), poly(ethylene glycol) methyl ether methacrylate (mPEGMA), and dopamine methacrylamide (DMAAm) was synthesized by UV-polymerization. A literature-known polymer system without DMAAm was prepared for comparison. Samples from both polymer films were immersed in the ILE to obtain GPEs. It was found that the addition of DMAAm increased the electrolyte uptake significantly. GPEs comprising DMAAm reveal high ionic conductivity (2.3 mS cm<sup>−1</sup> at 20 °C) and improved galvanostatic cycling performance in Li//PTMA cells compared to the GPEs without DMAAm.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":34318,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Power Sources Advances","volume":"35 ","pages":"Article 100186"},"PeriodicalIF":4.6,"publicationDate":"2025-08-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144917942","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Matthieu Dessiex , Vincent Plouzennec , Sophia Haussener , Felix N. Büchi
{"title":"Catalyst layer at the junction of a forward bias bipolar membrane for CO2 electrolysis","authors":"Matthieu Dessiex , Vincent Plouzennec , Sophia Haussener , Felix N. Büchi","doi":"10.1016/j.powera.2025.100185","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.powera.2025.100185","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>CO<sub>2</sub> reduction in an electrolysis cell with a forward bias bipolar membrane (BPM) ensures good selectivity and CO<sub>2</sub> utilization, but still suffers from large overvoltages. Recent studies have shown that integrating metal-oxide catalysts at the BPM junction in reverse bias significantly enhances the performance of water electrolyzers. It remains unclear if this method has the same positive effect on CO<sub>2</sub> electrolysis. We studied the performance of a specially designed zero-gap BPM CO<sub>2</sub> electrolyzer operating in forward bias mode, incorporating metal-oxide nanoparticles at the BPM interface. For TiO<sub>2</sub> catalyst, the optimal loading at the BPM junction was between 10 and 30 μg<!--> <!-->cm<sup>-2</sup>, resulting in a 75% higher current density for the same iR-free overpotential. Physical characterization using scanning electron microscopy of the catalyst layers revealed that the optimum performance of the CO<sub>2</sub> electrolyzer correlates with a complete coverage. SiO<sub>2</sub> and IrO<sub>2</sub> metal-oxides were also tested at the BPM junction. SiO<sub>2</sub> showed comparable performance to TiO<sub>2</sub>, whereas IrO<sub>2</sub> improved the current density by approximately 100% at an iR-free overpotential of 0.7 V compared to the pristine BPM.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":34318,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Power Sources Advances","volume":"35 ","pages":"Article 100185"},"PeriodicalIF":4.6,"publicationDate":"2025-08-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144878108","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Mrudula Prasad , Benedikt Prifling , Matthias Neumann , Simon Hein , Rares Scurtu , Alice Hoffmann , André Hilger , Markus Osenberg , Ingo Manke , Margret Wohlfahrt-Mehrens , Volker Schmidt , Arnulf Latz , Timo Danner
{"title":"Analysis of carbon-binder domain morphology and correlation to effective ion transport properties","authors":"Mrudula Prasad , Benedikt Prifling , Matthias Neumann , Simon Hein , Rares Scurtu , Alice Hoffmann , André Hilger , Markus Osenberg , Ingo Manke , Margret Wohlfahrt-Mehrens , Volker Schmidt , Arnulf Latz , Timo Danner","doi":"10.1016/j.powera.2025.100183","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.powera.2025.100183","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The conductive additive and binder domain (CBD) is an essential component of lithium-ion battery electrodes. It enhances the electrical connectivity and mechanical stability within the solid electrode matrix. The CBD aggregate exhibits inner porosity that significantly impacts ion transport within the electrode. Thus, the spatial distribution of CBD and its morphology play a critical role for ion transport pathways within the electrode. In order to quantify the extent of this influence, we employ high-resolution focused ion beam/scanning electron microscopy (FIB-SEM) imaging and isolate regions with just solid CBD and pore. This enables us to quantitatively correlate the CBD morphology with physical transport parameters and present a function that describes the relationship between CBD porosity and its ionic conductivity. Through our work, we provide insights into the CBD microstructure for use in future continuum-scale models.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":34318,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Power Sources Advances","volume":"34 ","pages":"Article 100183"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2025-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144557376","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Novel conductive and binding fibers for ultra-thick lithium-ion battery electrodes","authors":"Ayaka Yonaga, Shigehiro Kawauchi, Takuro Matsunaga","doi":"10.1016/j.powera.2025.100182","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.powera.2025.100182","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Using ultra-thick electrodes could be a promising strategy to increase the energy density of lithium-ion batteries. However, thickening electrodes leads to higher resistance for electron/ion transportation within the electrodes, resulting in a decrease in capacity and power. In addition, binder migration, which is a problem in the slurry coating process, becomes more pronounced. In this paper, we propose a novel fibrous conductive additive, conductive and binding fibers (CBFs), which are simply fabricated by combining two cost-effective materials—acetylene black and polyvinylidene fluoride—using electrospinning. We also report techniques to prepare CBF-based electrodes (CBFEs) using a solvent-free dry process. Morphological and electrochemical evaluations of the CBFEs (mass loading: 100 mg cm<sup>−2</sup>) reveal that the unique electrode structure formed by CBFs leads to high battery performance. The continuous efficient conductive networks formed by CBFs prevent electrical isolation of the active material particles. In addition, the CBFs serve as frameworks in electrodes because of their adhesion, forming larger pores (∼1 μm) and enhancing ion transport. Consequently, CBFEs achieve a discharge capacity of 91.9 mA h g<sub>AM</sub><sup>−1</sup> at 0.2C—a 1.6-fold improvement over conventional electrodes. The features of CBFs, which combine both conductivity and binding properties, enable the realization of a low-cost and high-performance electrode.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":34318,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Power Sources Advances","volume":"34 ","pages":"Article 100182"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2025-06-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144262155","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A sustainable delamination approach for simultaneous separation and leaching of cathodes from end-of-life Li ion batteries","authors":"Pietro Cattaneo , Daniele Callegari , Fiorenza D'Aprile , Eliana Quartarone","doi":"10.1016/j.powera.2025.100181","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.powera.2025.100181","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The increasing demand for Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) in several applications has led to a substantial rise in their production, posing risks in the supply of critical raw materials (CRM, e.g.: Li, Ni, Co). Additionally, improper disposal of end-of-life batteries can lead to environmental pollution and loss of technological value stressing the necessity for sustainable recycling. Current methods involve shredding batteries into a black mass, further processed via pyrometallurgy (energy-intensive) and/or hydrometallurgy with inorganic acids (environmentally hazardous) to recover CRMs. A more refined approach to LIBs recycling includes the dismantling and the sorting of their components, allowing for a targeted extraction.</div><div>The spent cathodes recycling process here presented involves the simultaneous delamination from the current collector and the leaching (>95 %) of the cathode active material (CAM) in a citric acid solution, enabling also the recovery of Polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) and Carbon filler as unleached residues, which can be used as a composite binder for new electrodes manufacturing. Lastly, metals are recovered with high yields (>85 %) as precursors, used to resynthesise fresh CAM and close the recycling loop. To validate the proposed strategy, the recycled CAM was used in a new cathode manufacturing followed by its functional characterization in a half-cell configuration, achieving high coulombic efficiencies (>99.2 %) and satisfying specific capacities upon cycling (initial capacity: 115 mAh g<sup>−1</sup>).</div></div>","PeriodicalId":34318,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Power Sources Advances","volume":"34 ","pages":"Article 100181"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2025-06-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144229560","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Andreas Trondl , Benjamin Schaufelberger , Thomas Kisters , Clemens Fehrenbach , Anja Steiert , Dong-Zhi Sun
{"title":"Failure and constitutive behavior of a Li-ion pouch cell under mechanical loading","authors":"Andreas Trondl , Benjamin Schaufelberger , Thomas Kisters , Clemens Fehrenbach , Anja Steiert , Dong-Zhi Sun","doi":"10.1016/j.powera.2025.100178","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.powera.2025.100178","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The constitutive mechanical behavior of the individual components in Lithium-ion cells has a fundamental influence on the development of internal electrical short-circuits in crash-relevant load scenarios. These short circuits can result in explosive, thermally unstable states (so called thermal runaways). The experimental characterization of mechanical properties of single components but also of entire cells is therefore a central aspect in the safety-related assessment of battery systems. This paper presents and compares experimental results of the mechanical characterization of individual cell components as well as whole pouch-cells under different loading patterns. Especially, the different mechanical behavior of the active materials NMC and graphite was investigated in dry and wet conditions. In compression tests, the presence of the electrolyte reduced the stress levels by about 100 % for the graphite layered anode (Cu) and by about 20 % for the NMC layered cathode (Al) compared to dry conditions. The separator displayed an anisotropy with tensile strengths differing by a factor of three between the longitudinal and transversal orientations. For investigating the failure of a whole pouch-cell, interrupted flat-punch and hemispherical-punch indentation tests were performed. Post-mortem CT analysis revealed that crack development is rather gradual than abrupt. The initiation and propagation of the failing cell structure were examined and related to the characteristics of the individual cell components. It could be concluded that for a physical based modeling of the deformation and fracture processes within the cell, understanding the mechanical behavior on component and on cell level is crucial.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":34318,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Power Sources Advances","volume":"34 ","pages":"Article 100178"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2025-06-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144205581","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Optimizing the thermal treatment procedure using electrochemical methods to improve the performance of vanadium redox flow batteries","authors":"Mohammad Rahimi , Filippo Fenini , Anders Bentien","doi":"10.1016/j.powera.2025.100180","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.powera.2025.100180","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In this article, different thermal treatment procedures were carefully investigated by electrochemical methods to find the optimized time and temperature for enhancing the electrochemical performance and activity of the graphite felt electrodes within the vanadium redox flow battery. Two prestigious and commercially used graphite felts of SGL GFD 4.65 EA and AvCarb G150 were used for this purpose. Cyclic voltammetry results initially were used to recognize the procedures with the most improved kinetics. This demonstrated the influences of treatment procedures on electrode kinetics by showing an improved electrode rate constant. In the following, area-specific resistance obtained by the polarization curves technique was used to examine the role of the thermal treatment procedure on improvement of the mass-transfer effect and, consequently, explore a treatment procedure to maximize the electrode activity. Both obtained CV and ASR data showed a better performance for thermally treated SGL 4.65 EA compared to that of AvCarb G150. Enhancing the electrode kinetics due to thermal treatment showed the largest contribution to reducing the ASR indicated by electrochemical impedance spectroscopy of the SGL 4.65 EA. The best electrode performance and activity was observed using the thermal treatment of the SGL 4.65 EA at 500/550 °C for 3/3.5 h with an ASR of 0.63/0.64 Ωcm<sup>2</sup>, respectively, lower than prior works with almost the same membrane properties. An interesting conclusion is that thermal treatment with an optimized procedure can sufficiently catalyze vanadium redox reactions on graphite felts better than those treated with electro-catalysts impressing no need for further electrode modification.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":34318,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Power Sources Advances","volume":"33 ","pages":"Article 100180"},"PeriodicalIF":5.4,"publicationDate":"2025-05-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144089053","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}