Operando monitoring of thermal runaway in commercial lithium-ion cells via advanced lab-on-fiber technologies

Operando monitoring of complex physical and chemical activities inside rechargeable lithium-ion batteries during thermal runaway is critical to understanding thermal runaway mechanisms and giving early warning of safety-related failure. However, most existing sensors cannot survive during such extremely hazardous thermal runaway processes (temperature up to 500 °C accompanied by fire and explosion). To address this, we develop a compact and multifunctional optical fiber sensor (12 mm in length and 125 µm in diameter) capable of insertion into commercial 18650 cells to continuously monitor internal temperature and pressure effects during cell thermal runaway. We observe a stable and reproducible correlation between the cell thermal runaway and the optical response. The sensor’s signal shows two internal pressure peaks corresponding to safety venting and initiation of thermal runaway. Further analysis reveals that a scalable solution for predicting imminent thermal runaway is the detection of the abrupt turning range of the differential curves of cell temperature and pressure, which corresponds to an internal transformation between the cell reversible and irreversible reactions. By raising an alert even before safety venting, this new operando measurement tool can provide crucial capabilities in cell safety assessment and warning of thermal runaway.