Battery Cell Technology – Cohort 5

Course – Teaser Video

This exploration delves into the electrification of the world by bridging chemistry and electricity for the purposes of energy conversion and storage. This course goes beyond mere understanding; it aims to impart a mastery of the principles that power our world. Our journey commences with an introduction to electrochemical cells, exploring the origin of potential and its capacity to drive current through a circuit. We will explore a variety of battery materials and discuss the mechanisms of energy storage within them, employing various non-destructive electrochemical techniques such as Cyclic Voltammetry (CV), Chronoamperometry (CA), Chronopotentiometry (CP), Differential Pulse Voltammetry (DPV), Galvanostatic Charge Discharge (GCD), Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS), and Galvanostatic Intermittent Titration Technique (GITT). For instance, I will elucidate the charging and discharging processes of a battery using analogies from everyday life. In the second part of the course, how the battery technology is applied to EV will be discussed. In this part, cell manufacturing process, cell modelling approaches, cell diagnostics, BMS, and battery recycling would be discussed.

Battery demand for vehicles is steadily growing due to the upcoming battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs). Currently, global sales of BEV and PHEV cars are outperforming sales of HEVs(hybrid electric vehicles). To meet the demand in the area of batteries, the requirement for critical materials for battery use is on a steady rise. For example, in 2022, demand for Li exceeded the supply. According to a report from the International Energy Agency, in 2022 alone, 60% of lithium, 30% of cobalt, and 10% of nickel out of the total production went only to EV batteries. Therefore, it is important to develop advanced battery technologies to reduce the dependence on these critical materials to improve resilience and energy security.

This course gives a comprehensive view of materials, characterisation, and how it is applied to battery and battery integration with vehicles. This would be useful for engineers who are working on the battery characterisation and maintenance side of the auto industry and grid energy storage sector. Besides, it would help researchers to understand the underlying principle and chemistry of battery materials enabling them to venture to new and advanced battery materials development.

36 hours of recorded videos and 12 hours of online live interactive sessions with the faculty

Module 1 : Battery Cell Materials

Module 2: Cell Technology Applications in Industry

Course Start date: Sep 18, 2026

Course End date: Dec 20, 2026

Mode: Pre recorded Videos & Assignments will be released on Fridays and Online Live session on Saturdays.

This Module covers the basics of electrochemistry and how to use it to understand the batteries. Some analogy from commonly known examples will be used to introduce the advanced concepts like over potential and associated energy loss in batteries, which leads to thermal runaway situations. Besides, the phenomenon responsible for energy storage, such as intercalation, alloying and conversion will be discussed with examples of anode and cathode materials used in the current state of the art Li-ion battery. Besides electrical characterisation pertain to the anode, cathode and whole cell would be discussed in details, particularly non-destructive techniques to understand the state of health and state of charge of battery.

Prof. Kothandaraman Ramanujam, Department of Chemistry, IIT Madras.

Electrochemical cells (a) Converting rate of reaction into current density (b) Converting potential of a reaction into Gibbs free energy (c) Faraday constant ( in C, and Ah) (d) Capacitor: Non-faradic current (e) Metal-solution interface (f) Galvanic potential (g) Electrochemical series (h) Galvanic and electrolytic cells (i) Nernst equation

Voltage loss (overpotential) and Kinetics (a) Overpotential (activation, ohmic and concentration) (b) Rate law treatment to obtain Butler Volmer Kinetics (c) Tafel kinetics (d) Faraday’s laws and coulombic efficiency

Battery Materials (a) Primary and secondary batteries (b) Li/Li-ion battery (c) Anode materials (d) Cathode materials (e) Electrolytes (Non-aqueous) (f) Solid electrolyte interface (g) Cathode electrolyte interface (h) Energy Storage Mechanism (Intercalation, conversion and alloying) (i) Irreversible capacity loss (j) Theoretical Capacity (k) Volume strain (l) Zero strain materials (m) Solid state conductors (n) Superionic conductors (o) Na-ion battery materials

Electrochemical Techniques (a) Cyclic voltammetry (b) Chrono amperometry (c) Chrono potentiometry (d) Differential pulse voltammetry (e) Galvanostatic charge-discharge (f) dQ/dV vs. Capacity plot (g) Impedance spectroscopy, a non-destructive technique (h) Galvanostatic intermittent titration (i) Symmetric cell for critical current density analysis (j) Li+ transport number calculation

This module focusses on cell technologies that are employed in EVs today in India and globally. It provides a perspective from the automakers' (application) point of view: the battery technology selection criteria, implementation into the vehicles, and the challenges they face in ensuring safe and trouble-free experience for the customers, and the tools/processes they commonly use. It also describes the battery ecosystem in India and identifies imperatives for successful EV adoption, calling out indigenous cell manufacturing as a critical need.

Dr. Raghunathan, Professor of Practice at IIT Madras

Learning outcomes of this module:

Application of the Module: