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Decoding Li-ion Cell Voltages Of Different Chemistries

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While deciding an optimal Lithium-ion cell chemistry for different applications, I came across this question quite a few times, ' Why different Li-ion cell chemistries have different terminal voltages? ' There are numerous LiB chemistry types available in the market. e.g. Lithium Cobalt Oxide (LCO), Li Nickel Cobalt Aluminum Oxide (NCA), Lithium Tantalate Oxide (LTO), Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP), etc to name a few. However, each and every battery type has its positive-negative points. Although the working principle of all these chemistries is the same, their terminal voltages are different. For example, LCO cells can go up to 4.25V, NCA can be charged up to 4.2V whereas LFP and LTO type cells can have a maximum of 3.8V and ~2.5V respectively. This difference in the voltage has a very large effect on the battery capacity (since energy capacity is directly proportional to the battery voltage). In this blog, I will answer 'Why different LiB chemistries have different ...
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Battery Pack 101

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What is a 'battery pack?' I have been asked this question many times. Often the term 'battery' and 'battery pack' is being used interchangeably. I thought this could be an interesting topic to write about. We will try to cover the following topics in this blog post: What is a battery pack? What components/systems does a battery pack contain? Block level diagram of a typical battery pack Battery Management System *I will specifically talk about Lithium-ion battery packs. some of the concepts may not hold true for other battery chemistries like Lead-acid, NiMH, NiCd etc.   Let's begin with what's a battery pack? Figure 1 As shown in the above diagram, The term 'cell' refers to a single energy storage device.  When one or more cells are connected in a series-parallel connection, a whole assembly is called a 'battery' or 'battery pack'. As said before, a battery pack may consist of one or more cells. The numb...
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How Does The LiB Work?

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It has been almost three decades that the Lithium-ion Battery (LiB) was first commercialized in 1991 by Sony (I have worked at the same R&D lab! 😊).  LiBs has shown good reliability over time and now it is the most sought after energy storage chemistry for automotive and numerous other consumer applications. In this blog post, I will describe a fundamental working mechanism of a LiB. A large number of resources are available on the internet for getting insight into the LiB mechanism. I will try to give a consolidated and brief overview of: LiB charge-discharge mechanism Non-idealities in LiB operation Overview of Energy Storage Devices Figure 1 shows different types of energy storage mechanisms ranging from mechanical, electrical and chemical energy storage (it is not an all-inclusive picture. Numerous other techniques exist for storing different forms of energies)  Out of those main three types, Chemical energy storage devices are calle...
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