Paving the way for industrial ultrafast laser structuring of lithium-ion battery electrodes by increasing the scanning accuracy

The performance of lithium-ion batteries is determined by the structural properties of the electrodes, e.g., the choice of an active material and porosity. An increase in performance is crucial for fulfilling the future requirements of various applications, such as electric vehicles and consumer electronics. Laser structuring with short and ultrashort pulses offers great potential, which has been demonstrated in many research studies. Based on already published preliminary work, which is primarily dedicated to the proof of electrochemical enhancements, requirements for the structuring process are examined. Starting from a realistic production scenario for lithium-ion electrode processing, calculations concerning the technical requirements for the laser scanner system are made. The results show high demands on usable control technology. For this reason, the development of a new type of control system is presented, which has significantly more temporal accuracy in signal transmission and thus provides the basis for fast and, at the same time, high-precision processing with pulsed laser systems.