SBIR/STTR Award attributes
Recognizing the superior performance of Lithium-ion batteries the Army is leading an effort to create a Lithium-ion drop-in replacement for legacy Lead-Acid 6T batteries. Lithium-ion battery packs are relatively recent, and as such there are opportunities for improvements. Key areas in much need of improvement include qualification, inspection and manufacturing of cells and packs. Current methods to ensure cell compliance and matching, such as capacity tests, Coulombic efficiency tests, and impedance spectroscopy, to name a few, are essential for quality manufacturing, but our own experiences with Lithium-ion 6T batteries demonstrate that there is still much needed room for improvement. New methods are needed that can properly, rapidly and early detect latent defects, that can better match/select cells used in battery packs, that can provide actionable information to cost-effectively tune the manufacturing process, that can help expedite qualification tests and inspections and that are specific to the application requirements. To achieve a substantial leap in improvement X-wave Innovations Inc., proposes a new system that classifies cells and detects latent defects to create higher quality packs, and in the process also provides Periodic Production Inspection (PPI) test results faster enabling accurate on-line manufacturing monitoring and tracking.
