A Database for Comparative Electrochemical Performance of Commercial 18650-Format Lithium-Ion Cells

Lithium-ion batteries are a central technology to our daily lives with widespread use in mobile devices and electric vehicles. These batteries are also beginning to be widely used in electric grid infrastructure support applications which have stringent safety and reliability requirements. Typically, electrochemical performance data is not available for modelers to validate their simulations, mechanisms, and algorithms for lithium-ion battery performance and lifetime. In this paper, we report on the electrochemical performance of commercial 18650 cells at a variety of temperatures and discharge currents. We found that LiFePO4 is temperature tolerant for discharge currents at or below 10 A whereas LiCoO2, LiNixCoyAl1-x-yO2, and LiNi0.80Mn0.15Co0.05O2 exhibited optimal electrochemical performance when the temperature is maintained at 15°C. LiNixCoyAl1-x-yO2 showed signs of lithium plating at lower temperatures, evidenced by irreversible capacity loss and emergence of a high-voltage differential capacity peak. Furthermore, all cells need to be monitored for self-heating, as environment temperature and high discharge currents may elicit an unintended abuse condition. Overall, this study shows that lithium-ion batteries are highly application-specific and electrochemical behavior must be well understood for safe and reliable operation. Additionally, data collected in this study is available for anyone to download for further analysis and model validation.