X-ray Based Visualization of the Electrolyte Filling Process of Lithium Ion Batteries

The electrolyte filling process constitutes the interface between cell assembly and formation of lithium ion batteries. Electrolyte filling is known as a quality critical and also time consuming process step. To avoid limitations in battery quality a homogeneous electrolyte distribution is necessary. Therefore, especially large sized cells are stored for hours. To accelerate filling and wetting processes the effect of materials- and process parameters on electrolyte distribution needs to be investigated. Unfortunately, in situ methods to characterize the filling and wetting state are still rare, limited in availability or even time-consuming in preparation. To overcome these drawbacks this paper introduces X-ray as an innovative method to visualize the electrolyte filling process in large scaled lithium ion batteries. Therefore, an experimental setup was developed to enable in situ X-ray measurements during the filling process of large scaled cells. Additionally, an evaluation process for the optical data was proposed. Based on these images the suitability of X-ray as visualization method is shown considering three exemplary filling parameters.