News: Optoelectronics
1 December 2021
TRUMPF VCSEL heating system accelerates sustainable Li-battery production
At the Battery Show Europe 2021 in Stuttgart, TRUMPF Photonic Components GmbH of Ulm, Germany (part of the TRUMPF Group), which manufactures vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) and photodiodes for the consumer electronics, datacoms, industrial sensing, heating and automotive markets, presented its new VCSEL heating solutions for e-mobility. The unique VCSEL high-power infrared systems are said to offer benefits for two application fields in the manufacturing of lithium (Li)-batteries.
One is the battery foil drying of batteries, for example for e-cars. The VCSEL heating systems work with infrared radiation, directly transferring heat to the application without any energy loss. This increases the efficiency of the battery process chain. “E-mobility is targeting one of our main strategic growing business fields for our VCSEL heating systems,” says Ralph Gudde, VP marketing & sales. Laser-based VCSEL arrays work very fast with directed optical infrared heating, in a defined manner to heat large areas. Compared with standard ovens, the VCSEL heating systems need less energy and allow a significantly reduced production system footprint. The active material on the electrode foils can be dried efficiently to keep the solvent content as low as possible.
VCSEL heating systems can also extend the lifetime of the battery cells, as they avoid wrinkles of the foils through a highly accurate sealing process. This leads to higher quality and homogeneity of the pouch cells compared with other production methods such as welding with hot bars.
Furthermore, a VCSEL heating system is up to three times faster than hot bars. This increase in production speed is possible as the heat for welding is applied inside the pouch foil, close to the weld. To guarantee that only the foil seam is heated up, the clamping uses sapphire components. Therefore, high-quality welding results are achieved, as the clamping can be opened when the plastic of the foils is already solidified. This avoids defects of the weld seam, compared with other processes where the clamping must be opened when the plastic is still in a liquid state. “Next to standard systems we also develop customized solutions,” says Gudde. “In our Customer Application Center in Aachen, we do have the infrastructure to run tests and evaluate the right solution with our customers.”
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