Source: Waters Corp.
The Coin Cell Differential Scanning Calorimeter (DSC), designed to transform battery safety testing, enables direct testing of fully assembled coin cells, eliminating time-intensive preparation steps while delivering faster, more descriptive safety and performance insights. The Coin Cell DSC is said to be the only commercially available DSC that provides multidimensional data capture and enables researchers to collect whole-cell thermal data while simultaneously measuring evolved gas and electrochemical performance. By incorporating voltage monitoring and charge/discharge capability, researchers can directly correlate thermal and electrochemical behavior enabling earlier insights into thermal runaway and battery failure. It can also be coupled with MS, Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR), or Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS) to enable direct analysis of off-gas composition. The Coin Cell DSC introduces a unique capsule design that eliminates the highly time-consuming need for cell teardown, reducing the average sample preparation time by more than 90%. This approach preserves sample integrity while significantly accelerating data generation. The new system redefines thermal analysis by integrating advanced temperature performance, efficient workflows, and multidimensional data capture into a single platform. With an industry-leading –80 °C to 600 °C range, the Coin Cell DSC enables comprehensive analysis of low- and high-temperature behavior, expanding future applications in development and QA/QC. Traditional battery safety testing methods, such as accelerating rate calorimetry (ARC), are deployed during late-stage research and development and require large cell formats, specialized facilities, and long experiment times. In contrast, the Coin Cell DSC enables direct evaluation of intact coin cells earlier and faster, streamlining development and reducing risk. — Waters Corp., Milford, Mass.