Comparative Study on Pulsed Laser Welding Strategies for Contacting Lithium-Ion Batteries

The transition towards renewable energy implicates more decentralized and time-dependent ways of energy generation. In order to deal with the resulting fluctuation in energy supply, local storage systems are necessary. Larger systems may consist of thousands of battery cells. Therefore, the reliable interconnection between the individual battery cells is the basic prerequisite for the production of these systems. It has been demonstrated that laser beam welding is a suitable process for the contacting of batteries. However, due to the high requirements regarding the heat input and the reproducibility of the joining process, further investigations are necessary. Within this work, experiments on pulsed laser beam welding of nickel-plated DC04 steel were conducted. Four different pulsed welding strategies were analyzed in a preliminary study in order to develop a method for obtaining suitable process parameters while reducing the amount of free parameters. Subsequently, a comparative study between the rectangular pulse, the shaped pulse, the spike pulse and the sloping pulse was carried out. The weld seam properties as well as the electrical and the mechanical properties of the connection joints were evaluated. The results presented in this paper indicate a high eligibility of pulsed laser beam welding as a joining process for the connection of battery cells. For all analyzed pulsed welding strategies a homogeneous weld seam without full penetration was observed. Similar electrical resistances for all strategies were measured despite the comparatively small total joint area for the discretely pulsed weld seams.