At this year’s annual symposium in DBS, we had the pleasure of inviting Dr. Peter Axmann from ZSW, Germany. Dr. Axmann is an expert on cathode materials in alkaline and lithium-ion batteries and has extensive knowledge of the assembly and characterisation of these battery systems. Daniel started this year’s workgroup session with a short summary of the group’s activities during 2016 which were mainly:
- A tour of the battery research facilities at Haldor Topsøe.
- A seminar in impedance spectroscopy at DTU with Torben Jacobsen and Johan Hjelm as the main speakers.
- A round-robin measurement on LNMO supplied by Haldor Topsøe.
The remainder of the session, Dr. Axmann held a very informative talk on various aspects of battery assembly and the following electrochemical measurements. Each step of the cell fabrication has an influence on the battery performance and thus comparison between research groups, or even within the same research group, can be meaningless if care has not been taken to use similar fabrication parameters such as coating thickness and particle size. Since most members of the workgroup are students or otherwise recently entering battery research, this was a great opportunity to ask questions about the fundamentals of battery research. Finally, it was agreed that the round-robin measurements on LNMO will continue, and a meeting will be planned during the autumn this year to compare the results.
