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Battery pack adhesives

Battery pack adhesives must do much more than simply hold things together. Peter Donaldson reports.

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Wide bandgap materials

The shift to wide bandgap materials isn’t just an incremental upgrade, it is the fundamental enabler for the next generation of high-performance, long-range EVs, reports Nick Flaherty Wide bandgap (WBG) materials – primarily silicon carbide (SiC) and gallium nitride (GaN), but also gallium oxide (Ga2O3 or GaO) – are defined by their electronic bandgap energy, which is significantly higher than that of traditional silicon at 1.1 eV. Specifically, SiC and GaN possess bandgaps of approximately 3.2 and 3.4 eV, respectively, with GaO at 4.5–4.9 eV.

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Battery electrode binders

Binders in EV batteries do far more than simply act as a glue holding the electrodes together, as revealed by Peter Donaldson.

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Motor testing

Repeated testing of electric motors brings many benefits. Nick Flaherty examines some of the procedures in common use. Electric motor tests conducted throughout the stages of an electric motor’s life cycle provide essential information about the motor’s overall health and provide engineers with a range of benefits.

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Battery thermal barriers

New materials from carbon nanotubes to intumescent polymers are opening up innovative ways of providing thermal management in e-mobility battery packs, as Nick Flaherty finds out. From mica sheets to thermal gap fillers and aerogels, there are now more options than ever for managing heat flow through a battery pack and powertrain, and for mitigating the effects of thermal runaway.

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Battery separator materials

Peter Donaldson examines the essential properties of battery separator materials. Every lithium-ion cell has a separator between the electrodes, an often overlooked but fundamental component with three key functions.

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Battery cooling

As batteries pack more energy into a given mass and volume while charging speeds increase, engineers face growing challenges in managing heat dissipation efficiently and safely. In wrestling with this problem, they are are reshaping thermal management

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Battery pack materials

New materials are fighting to reduce the weight of the battery enclosure in an EV, as Nick Flaherty explains. Around 80% of battery pack enclosures today are constructed from aluminium, with the rest built from steel.

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Fasteners for EV assembly

Peter Donaldson assesses the relative strengths of the fastening techniques used in EV fabrication. Nuts, bolts and screws with standardised sizes and thread pitches were one of the most important technological developments in the history of manufacturing. Without them – and the wider field of fasteners that they represent – it is more

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HV measurement

Higher voltages mean more power but also more test challenges, and Nick Flaherty has been looking into the latest trends in powertrain testing. High-voltage (HV) testing is an important part of the development process for an e-mobility powertrain.