Understanding why a battery material performs the way it does requires more than chemical analysis alone. Identifying the material characteristics that drive performance can be critical to development, manufacturing, and quality control efforts. Particle Technology Labs provides the analytical testing needed to characterize these critical material properties, troubleshoot issues, and support informed production decisions.

Understand Particle Size Before It Impacts Performance

Challenge: Variations in particle size or particle shape can affect powder handling, electrode manufacturing, packing behavior, and batch-to-batch consistency. When material performance changes unexpectedly, bulk specifications may not explain the difference.

Solution: PTL helps battery developers and manufacturers characterize particle size and morphology using techniques selected for the material and the question being investigated, including: laser diffraction for particle size distribution, static image analysis for particle size and shape, and sieve analysis when appropriate for the material and size range

These analyses can support incoming-material qualification, supplier comparisons, lot-to-lot consistency studies, formulation development, and manufacturing investigations.

Reveal the Surface Characteristics Driving Material Behavior

Challenge: Surface area often influences how active materials, conductive additives, and precursor powders behave during processing. Changes in surface area may indicate differences in particle structure, available reactive surface, or manufacturing history.

Solution: PTL’s surface area analyses help clients compare materials, evaluate batch consistency, investigate process changes, and better understand differences between material lots.

Characterize Pore Structure with Confidence

Challenge: Pore size, pore volume, and porosity can affect electrolyte interaction, coating performance, separator function, and overall material behavior. Understanding these characteristics is often critical during development, optimization, and troubleshooting.

Solution: PTL provides pore structure characterization through mercury intrusion porosimetry and, for appropriate materials, capillary flow porometry. Our team helps determine which technique best addresses the material and performance questions being evaluated.

Verify Separator and Electrode Quality

Challenge: Separator films and electrode coatings require controlled physical characteristics to perform as intended. Variations in porosity, surface features, or material distribution can raise questions during development or manufacturing.

Solution: PTL can characterize separator and electrode materials using a combination of porosity analysis, pore-size measurement, surface-area testing, microscopy, and elemental characterization techniques, depending on the investigation.

Identify Contamination and Unexpected Surface Features

Challenge: Foreign particles, metallic inclusions, surface defects, or unexpected deposits can be difficult to identify using bulk analytical techniques alone.

Solution: PTL utilizes scanning electron microscopy (SEM)  for high-resolution imaging coupled with energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) to provide elemental information to help identify and localize surface features and contaminants. Chemisorption can also be used to evaluate metal dispersion on material surfaces.

Solve Powder Processing Challenges

Challenge: Flow problems often emerge during feeding, blending, transferring, compaction, or coating operations. Materials that meet particle specifications may still create manufacturing difficulties.

Solution: PTL’s powder flowability and bulk-property testing can help evaluate cohesion, flow behavior, compressibility, and related characteristics that may contribute to processing challenges.

Repeatable Methods for Better Decisions

Challenge: Reliable quality and development decisions require data generated through consistent analytical methods.

Solution: PTL can discuss method development and optimization projects designed to provide robust, repeatable analytical approaches tailored to specific materials, processes, and quality objectives.

Standards and Quality

PTL works with clients to select analytical techniques and methods appropriate for the material, development stage, and decision the data must support. When applicable, testing can be performed using established ASTM and ISO methodologies. PTL’s ISO/IEC 17025 accreditation reflects our commitment to generating reliable, high-quality analytical data.

When a published standard does not fully address a client’s material or objective, PTL can discuss customized analytical approaches or method development projects.

Discuss Your Battery Material Challenge with Our Team

Whether you’re qualifying a new material, investigating a manufacturing issue, or comparing supplier lots, PTL can help identify the analytical testing needed to answer your questions. Connect with our team to discuss your material, your objectives, and the data needed to move your project forward.