Neutron tomography study of a lithium-ion coin battery

Abstract Neutron imaging of lithium-ion coin cell battery was obtained using tomography technique at Neutron Scattering Laboratory in Multi-Purpose Research Reactor G. A. Siwabessy (RSG-GAS) Serpong facility. The coin cell battery was CR2032 (20d x 3.2t mm) type consisted of positive and negative cases made of stainless steel, a cathode layer from lithium Ferro phosphate coated on aluminum foil, polyethylene film as separator, lithium hexafluorophosphate solution in ethylene carbonate and diethyl carbonate as electrolyte, an anode layer from graphite coated on copper foil, and spacer as well as spring made of stainless steel. The neutron tomography was used to observe the inside structure of the full charged coin cell. The observation was carried out with a neutron flux of 10 7 n/s.cm 2 at 15 MWatt of reactor power. The image of the object is obtained by a Charge Coupled Detector (CCD) and the reconstruction software based on a filtered back-projection algorithm. The neutron imaging clearly shows the cell structure inside the casing. Even though the cell is not at the center of the casing, but it appears that the cell component consists of a cathode, separator and anode neatly arranged. The cross-cut image shows the important role of spring and spacer in improving the contact between cell and casing. The results showed the ability of neutron tomography techniques at RSG-GAS to investigate in detail the inside structure of a coin battery without disassembly (non-destructive test).