Analysis of Differences in Electrochemical Performance Between Coin and Pouch Cells for Lithium-Ion Battery Applications

Small coin cell batteries are predominantly used for testing lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) in academia because they require small amounts of material and are easy to assemble. However, insufficient attention is given to difference in cell performance that arises from the differences in format between coin cells used by academic researchers and pouch or cylindrical cells which are used in industry. In this article, we compare coin cells and pouch cells of different size with exactly the same electrode materials, electrolyte, and electrochemical conditions. We show the battery impedance changes substantially depending on the cell format using techniques including Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS) and Galvanostatic Intermittent Titration Technique (GITT). Using full cell NCA-graphite LIBs, we demonstrate that this difference in impedance has important knock-on effects on the battery rate performance due to ohmic polarization and the battery life time due to Li metal plating on the anode. We hope this work will help researchers getting a better idea of how small coin cell formats impact the cell performance and help predicting improvements that can be achieved by implementing larger cell formats.