Fast and Accurate Measurement of Entropy Profiles of Commercial Lithium-Ion Cells

We report on an effective approach to speed up the measurement of thermodynamic characterization curves (entropy of reaction ΔrS(x)) of rechargeable batteries, in particular commercial 18650 lithium ion cells. We propose and demonstrate a measurement and data processing protocol that reduces the time required to record entropy profiles from time scales of weeks to time scales of hours – without loss in accuracy. For time consuming studies such as investigations on ageing of battery cells, entropy profile measurements thus become as feasible as conventional electrochemical characterisation techniques like dV/dQ or cyclic voltammetry. We demonstrate this at the examples of two ageing protocols applied to a commercial high power and a commercial high energy cell, respectively: (i) accelerated calendric aging by storing cells at 100% state of charge at 60 °C and (ii) continuous cycling with a 1C current at 25 °C.