Entropy Profiles for Li-Ion Batteries—Effects of Chemistries and Degradation

This paper presents entropy measurements for a large set of commercial Li-ion cells. We present entropy data on full cells with a variety of common Li-ion cell electrode chemistries; graphite, hard carbon, lithium-titanium-oxide (LTO), lithium cobalt-oxide (LCO), nickel manganese cobalt oxides (NMC), nickel cobalt aluminium oxide (NCA), lithium iron-phosphate (LFP), as well as electrodes with mixes of these. All data were collected using an accelerated potentiometric method in steps of approximately 5% State-of-Charge (SoC) across the full SoC window. We observe that the entropy profiles depend on the chemistry of the Li-ion cells, but that they also vary between different commercial cells with the same chemistry. Entropy contributions are quantified with respect to both, their means, positive and negative contributions as well as their SoC variation. In addition, we present how different cyclic ageing temperatures change the entropy profiles for a selected commercial Li-ion cell through ageing. A clear difference in entropy profiles is observed after a capacity loss of 20%. This difference can be attributed to different ageing mechanisms within the Li-ion cells, leading to changes in the balancing of electrodes, as well as changes in the electrode materials.