A Post-Mortem Study Case of a Dynamically Aged Commercial NMC Cell

Lithium-ion batteries are currently the pioneers of green transition in the transportation sector. The nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) technology, in particular, has the largest market share in electric vehicles (EVs), offering high specific energy, optimized power performance, and lifetime. The aging of different lithium-ion battery technologies has been a major research topic in the last decade, either to study the degradation behavior, identify the associated aging mechanisms, or to develop health prediction models. However, the lab-scale standard test protocols are mostly utilized for aging characterization, which was deemed not useful since batteries are supposed to age dynamically in real life, leading to aging heterogeneity. In this research, a commercial NMC variation (4-4-2) was aged with a pragmatic standard-drive profile to study aging behavior. The characterized measurable parameters were statistically investigated before performing an autopsy on the aged battery. Harvested samples of negative and positive electrodes were analyzed with Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and the localized volumetric percentile of active materials was reported. Loss of lithium inventory was found to be the main aging mechanism linked to 20% faded capacity due to heavy electrolyte loss. Sparsely distributed fluorine from the lithium salt was found in both electrodes as a result of electrolyte decomposition.