Overview

Test cell for studying battery and supercap materials. Benefit from this test cell with plate-plate geometry for battery and supercap material testing as well as for separator and polymer electrolyte characterization.

• Only small sample amounts required
• Robust, user-friendly design
• Air-tight: moisture- and air-sensitive samples can be studied
• Flexible design with different variants

Typical applications

This test cell can be used for building and cycling batteries and supercapacitors, and beyond it is a perfect solution for testing wetted separator materials, polymer electrolytes, or coated solid electrolyte pellets.

• Determination of a separator's MacMullin number and of an active material's tortuosity
• Determination of the conductivity of polymer electrolytes or coated ceramic electrolyte pellets
• Supercap and battery cycling

Detailed description

The test cell TSC Battery consists of several high-quality building blocks: The nickel-plated base unit (= "thermo block") comes with an integrated Pt 100 temperature sensor to monitor the temperature very close to the sample. It is followed by a pair of current collector electrodes made of stainless steel 1.4404 press-fitted in PEEK-sleeves (PEEK = polyether ether ketone) with outer o-rings. There are two different types of current collector electrodes available: flat current collector electrodes with or without lateral PEEK insulation, and current collector electrodes with a punching edge made of PEEK to punch out metallic lithium or sodium from a foil.

To seal the test cell, a housing made of PEEK with two o-ring grooves is used which connects the base unit and the cap. In the housing, there are two lateral ports for fittings which can be used to insert capillaries or metal wires serving as (pseudo-) reference electrode.

The sample stack pressure can be adjusted with a gold-plated spring which is contacted by a spring contact in the cap via a gold-plated compression screw.