Battery

Battery materials characterization

From raw materials to full battery

Batteries are at the heart of the global energy transition. From electric mobility to renewable energy storage, their performance, safety, and sustainability depend on precise control at every stage of development. HORIBA supports the entire battery value chain with analytical and testing solutions that ensure purity, optimize processes, validate safety, and close the loop for a cleaner future.

Developers, manufacturers, and recyclers face unique challenges across the battery lifecycle:

Upstream

Guaranteeing the purity, consistency, and compliance of raw materials.

Midstream

Ensuring electrode and electrolyte homogeneity for safe, high-performance cells.

Downstream

Validating module/pack performance, improving safety, and enabling efficient recycling.


 

HORIBA provides scalable, automated, and high-performance testing and analysis solutions, that supports battery manufacturers, material suppliers, and researchers in optimizing processes, improving product quality, and ensuring compliance with environmental regulations.

Upstream: Raw Material Characterization

The journey to reliable batteries starts with the quality of raw materials. Cathodes, anodes, electrolytes, and separators all need to meet strict purity and structural standards. Even small impurities or defects can drastically impact capacity, safety, and lifetime. The upstream stage is therefore critical: manufacturers must guarantee the consistency and compliance of materials before they ever reach cell assembly.

Key challenges involvemaintaining material purity at industrial scale, detecting trace impurities that can accelerate degradation and ensuring reproducibility across global supply chains. HORIBA brings solutions:

  • Cathode materials: Raman spectroscopy reveals crystallinity and phase composition, while ICP-OES detects metallic impurities. This ensures cathodes meet performance requirements and avoids premature capacity loss.
  • Anode materials: Graphite structure and carbon morphology are analyzed to optimize conductivity and stability. Particle size distribution and hydrocarbon detection prevent defects that reduce efficiency.
  • Electrolytes and separators: ICP-OES identifies impurities that could trigger breakdown reactions. Glow Discharge Optical Emission Spectroscopy (GDOES) detects harmful element migration in separators, helping prevent internal short circuits.
  • Ageing and stability monitoring: Raman and GDOES track SEI (Solid Electrolyte Interphase) layer composition and lithium plating. This allows early detection of degradation mechanisms that compromise safety.
     

Together, these analyses safeguard the foundation of battery performance and safety, reducing costly failures later in the value chain.

Midstream: Complete Battery Cell and Pack Testing

At the midstream stage, raw materials are transformed into cells, modules, and packs. Here, the challenge shifts from purity to homogeneity and performance validation. Design choices, electrode quality, and electrolyte behavior must all align to deliver safe, long-lasting cells. Manufacturers need tools that provide a complete picture of electrochemical behavior under real-world conditions

Key challenges are balancing energy density, safety, and lifespan, predicting long-term degradation during accelerated testing and reproducing consistent conditions across R&D and production. With HORIBA, it’s possible to challenge:

  • Performance: Measuring capacity, open-circuit voltage, and resistance enables accurate battery management systems (BMS) and reliable simulation models.
  • Durability and ageing evaluation: Long-term cycling tests reveal how cells respond to usage and environmental stress, providing insights into degradation pathways.
  • Advanced characterization methods: Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS) complements DC cycling, uncovering internal resistance growth and charge-transfer limitations invisible to standard tests.
  • Environmental & thermal control: Climate chambers ensure reproducible results by controlling humidity and temperature. This prevents misleading results caused by external fluctuations.
     

By combining these methods, HORIBA enables data-driven design and validation that shortens development cycles and improves reliability from R&D to full production.

Downstream: Ensuring Safety and Sustainability

Once cells are assembled into modules and packs, the downstream stage focuses on safety, integration, and end-of-life management. Batteries must perform reliably under demanding conditions — from electric vehicles to grid storage — while meeting strict regulatory standards. With recycling and sustainability becoming urgent global priorities, downstream testing also ensures that valuable materials can be recovered and reused.

Key challenges involve preventing thermal runaway and catastrophic failures, ensuring consistent performance at the system level (packs and full EVs) and managing recycling and regulatory compliance. For this, HORIBA offers solutions:

  • Performance testing: High-precision cyclers and impedance spectroscopy validate the performance of modules, packs, and even full electric drivetrains, ensuring real-world readiness.
  • Safety assurance: HORIBA MIRA’s abuse testing facilities simulate crush, short circuits, and thermal runaway events, providing essential validation for automotive and energy storage safety.
  • Black mass recycling: ICP-OES and microXRF identify elemental composition in recycled material, allowing recovery of critical metals while ensuring compliance with purity standards.
  • Consulting & certification: HORIBA MIRA supports customers through functional safety assessments, cybersecurity compliance, and homologation for international markets.
     

This holistic approach ensures safe deployment and sustainable reuse, helping close the battery loop and support global decarbonization.

HORIBA Solutions for full battery chain testing

Across the full battery value chain, HORIBA’s integrated and scalable solutions support innovation from raw materials to recycling.

  • Raman Spectrometers identify crystallinity, structural defects, and degradation in cathodes and anodes and monitor SEI layers, lithium plating, and unstable compounds for performance and safety control. MicroRaman imagery is used to monitor separator contamination, structural changes, and degradation hotspots in cells.
     
  • Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission Spectrometers (ICP-OES) can detect trace metallic impurities in raw materials and electrolytes; it ensures purity, prevents breakdown reactions, and enables efficient black mass recycling.
     
  • Elemental Analyzers measure elemental composition and contaminants in electrode materials; critical for purity control and preventing unwanted reactions.
     
  • Particle Characterization Analyzers study size, shape, and morphology of anode/cathode particles, ensure electrode homogeneity and optimize conductivity and stability.
     
  • Glow Discharge Optical Emission Spectrometers (GDOES) provide depth profiling of separators and electrodes; detects harmful element migration and SEI layer properties.
     
  • Fluorescence Spectrometers detect unstable compounds and degradation products in materials to enhance early safety analysis.
     

HORIBA for Energy and Environment brings together HORIBA’s high-precision testing technologies and the engineering expertise of HORIBA for Mobility to support the development, validation, and industrial deployment of next-generation battery systems. From R&D testing to system-level safety certification and recycling, HORIBA for Energy delivers end-to-end solutions that help manufacturers accelerate innovation while ensuring performance, compliance, and sustainability.

  • Performance testing
    High-precision cyclers and advanced impedance spectroscopy tools enable reliable evaluation of battery modules, packs, and full electric drivetrains. These systems support real-world validation, BMS development, and optimized control strategies.
  • Black Mass Recycling
    ICP-OES and microXRF determine the elemental composition of recycled black mass, enabling accurate recovery of critical metals such as Li, Ni, Co, and Mn. These analyses improve recycling efficiency and ensure compliance with purity and sustainability standards.
  • Consulting & Certification
    HORIBA MIRA provides engineering consultancy for functional safety, cybersecurity, homologation, and regulatory compliance. This ensures that battery systems, EV platforms, and energy storage solutions meet international standards and are ready for global market deployment.
XploRA™ PLUS
XploRA™ PLUS

MicroRaman Spectrometer - Confocal Raman Microscope

Partica LA-960V2
Partica LA-960V2

Laser Scattering Particle Size Distribution Analyzer

XGT-9000
XGT-9000

X-ray Analytical Microscope (Micro-XRF)

Ultima Expert
Ultima Expert

High resolution, high sensitivity and high stability ICP-OES

GD-Profiler 2™
GD-Profiler 2™

Pulsed-RF Glow Discharge Optical Emission Spectrometer

EMIA-Expert
EMIA-Expert

Carbon/Sulfur Analyzer
(Flagship High-Accuracy Model)

EMGA-Expert (EMGA-30E/20E)
EMGA-Expert (EMGA-30E/20E)

Oxygen/Nitrogen/Hydrogen Analyzer
(Flagship High-Accuracy Model)

Fluorolog-QM
Fluorolog-QM

Modular Research Fluorometer for Lifetime and Steady State Measurements

LabRAM Soleil
LabRAM Soleil

Raman Spectroscope - Automated Imaging Microscope

LabRAM Odyssey
LabRAM Odyssey

Confocal Raman & High-Resolution Spectrometer

ETV-4000
ETV-4000

ElectroThermal Vaporization (ETV) for ICP-OES

Resources

Webinars

HORIBA offers a series of webinars exploring analytical solutions across the entire battery value chain, from materials characterization to cell testing and recycling.

Upcoming webinars are listed below, followed by the previous webinars of the series, available for replay:

Mastering the Battery Journey: Full Solution for the Entire Value Chain

Discover the comprehensive solutions offered by HORIBA for every step of the battery value chain, from raw materials to recycling. Our scalable, easy-to-use, and high-performance solutions are designed to tackle the challenges faced at each stage of battery production and usage.

Invisible Impacts: Unlocking Battery Performance Through Impurity Analysis

Minor impurities can cause major battery failures. This session delves into the critical role of impurity and additive control in both anode and cathode materials. Learn how early detection helps prevent capacity fade, short circuits, and other degradation phenomena, ensuring higher energy density and longer battery life.

Shaping Power: The Role of Particle Characterization and Elemental Analysis in Electrode Efficiency

Explore how HORIBA’s integrated solutions, including particle characterization and MicroXRF, provide comprehensive characterization of carbon materials and cathode powders. While laser diffraction and centrifugal sedimentation systems analyze particle size distribution and dispersion state with high precision and minimal sample prep, MicroXRF reveals elemental composition and ratios within electrodes at microscale.

Revealing the Hidden Structure: Crystallinity and Layer Analysis for Battery Materials

Crystallinity and material structure are key to maximizing battery energy and power density. This webinar guides you through essential characterization techniques for both carbon-based and cathode materials, empowering better design and quality control for next-gen batteries.

Ageing Uncovered: Diagnosing Battery Health with Post-Mortem and In-Situ Analysis

Understanding how and why batteries degrade over time is essential for improving design and lifecycle performance.
In this webinar, explore HORIBA’s approach to ageing studies using µRaman, GD-OES, and SEI for both in-situ and ex-situ diagnostics. See how we map SEI growth, detect oxide formation, and follow structural changes in electrodes to predict performance decline and inform better material and process choices.

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