Battery Videos

Cool and Protect EV Batteries Against Collision and Thermal Runaway

Battery Components:
Lid
Brazed
Liquid Cold Plate
Seals and Gaskets
Compression Pads
EMI Shielding
Electrical Insulation and Cell Wrapping
Battery Housing
Thermal Interface Materials
Battery Cells
Flexible Busbar
Multi-Layer Thermal Runaway Protection

Brazed Liquid Cold Plate
Lighter, high performance cooling systems increase power density for extended vehicle range

Seals and Gaskets
Waterproof battery enclosures seal out contaminants for improved safety and reliability

Compression Pads
Cushion batteries against collision impact and harsh road conditions to enhance consumer safety and reduce warranty expenses

EMI Shielding
Prevent electronic malfunction in critical safety systems by shielding unwanted signals

Electrical Insulation and Cell Wrapping
Electrically insulate cells to prevent spark voltage that can lead to fire

Thermal Interface Materials (TIM)
Maximize heat transfer from battery heat sources to increase thermal system performance

Dielectric Adhesive for Busbars
Protect flexible printed circuits in battery assemblies for extended device lifetimes

Multi-Layer Thermal Runaway Protection
Prevent battery thermal runaway with cell-to-cell integrated cooling and impact absorption

Hello and welcome to this Boyd Corporation and 3M webinar. Now let me introduce today’s presenters. With us today, we have Joe Petri. Joe is the Executive Sales Account Manager of the electronic materials solutions division at 3M. Also with us today is Louisa Farhat. Louisa is the Engineered Materials and Thermal Application specialist for eMobility with Boyd Corporation. To read more about either of our presenters today, please look at the speaker bio window right next to the main presentation window. And with that, I’d like to pass things along to Joe to get this webinar started! Joe, go right ahead.

Thank you for the introduction and good afternoon, good evening, or good morning to you all. My name is Joseph Petri and I’m grateful to the Boyd Corporation and Global Spec for inviting 3M to participate in today’s conversation, EV battery material applications. Our passion for science and innovation spans the entire enterprise, but we are organized around four global business groups to best serve our customers.

Each of our business groups help customers find solutions, big and small, to help improve various aspects of your life from safety equipment to workers, to the post-it notes you have on your desk, 3M science is never far away. We have sales in nearly every geography. So, to stay close to our customers, we have labs and manufacturing sites in every region: 71 countries, 85 labs, 50 customer technical centers. Focusing on global transportation and electronic OEM customers, the transportation and electronics business group is made up of electronics, display materials and systems, electronic materials, tapes and solutions. Our automotive and aerospace group, commercial solutions, advanced materials, and transportation safety. I spend my time working on electronic applications, creating solutions that help create the next generation of electronic technology. Customer-inspired innovation has long been a strength at 3M. We work with customers and partners to address their challenges. Global or local, we bring market insights into our approach and leverage both customer and industry expertise to apply our 51 technology platforms in order to develop solutions.

These technology platforms are shared across all 3M businesses and regions and can be combined to solve challenges across these businesses, industries, or geographies. During today’s discussion, I’ll share with you how this comes to life. Remember, our purpose is to be your science partner in building the future of eMobility and this partnership is unique at 3M. Expect to find bench-to-bench collaboration leveraging our materials science and global network of design centers to create innovative solutions for your next design challenge. eMobility has many areas that your company may be working on. We are working on them too, but today we’re going to focus on e-powertrain, and e-powertrain is a perfect example of how 3M leverages knowledge and expertise across different industries. For the past three and a half years, this team has been working to develop expertise and coordinate 3M solutions that affect fabrication, assembly materials for powered electronics, electrical insulation found on powered and industrial equipment, or motors, lightweighting materials, from aerospace to fuel cell. Our goal is to view these market trends and provide technical programs and solutions. With key drivers guiding us, we look at trends in each subsystem. Subsystems include battery, e-motor, power electronics. We look at what 3M technologies are going to enable cost and performance parity between internal combustion engines and electric vehicles today.

Our discussion will focus on just one area, and I plan on providing examples of 3M technology that can impact these trends. The area of focus today is battery solutions. When prioritizing development hoppers and work areas, it’s easy to get distracted. We focus on the barriers for adoption of electric vehicles. One example is to help enable high efficiency to utilize minimal battery capacity to produce the longest range. So today, we will focus on the first three areas and leave in-cell solutions to another day. Okay, the first area is electrical insulation. Here we’ve heard of several design challenges and work to supply products that address them. Examples include reliable insulation at over 800 volts, insulating materials resistant to high temperature during thermal runaway, and of course ease of processing to lower assembly costs. In the 3M electronics and transportation business group, there are many products that are relevant for your designs. Boyd Corporation is a global preferred converter partner with expertise in converting 3M tapes into these solutions. Let’s take a look at a few examples. The first example is a tape: 3M 1350 electrical tape is designed to protect EV battery components with an electrically insulating layer. This thin, high dielectric film has a flame retardant adhesive with excellent bond strength that works well in challenging environments to enable faster and consistent assembly. Our converter partner Boyd can even rotary die cut 3M 1350 into your specific part size, adding a release liner that reduces scrap and saves assembly time. Think of applications that need insulation such as modules, cooling plates, or even wire harnesses.

The second product I intend to share with you is the 3M flame resistant barrier insulation materials. Available in a variety of thicknesses, these products offer superb flame resistant and are uL recognized with both V0 and 5VA performance. We have many examples where 3M FRB materials are laminated with our adhesive systems, die cut into shapes which impact cycle time during assembly. Think of applications where a flame barrier is needed such as around a module or perhaps even between cells. Since we were talking about electronics, I wanted to also point out that there are applications where electromagnetic interference needs to be controlled. The 3M electronic materials solutions has an entire portfolio of tapes for component grounding or EMI shielding for a variety of applications throughout the vehicle modules, sensors, in-dash displays, cameras, bus bars, wire harnesses. They can all be affected by electromagnetic interference.

These EMSD tapes are an easy way to control EMI and improve the electronics experience of the driver and passengers. Some examples of these electrically conductive non-insulating tapes are here on this slide. You know as cars become more connected and the electro nics even more powerful, EMI is a real issue that these 3M tapes can address. Please be sure to pass this information on to the appropriate contacts you know within your organization. The second design challenge falls into the category of thermal management. There are many design challenges when we start talking about thermal solutions and 3M has several product portfolios that I know will be of interest to you. I probably don’t need to spend much time introducing this concept, but we’ll spend more time talking about potential solutions but trends that we see include energy and current per cell are increasing and the total number of cells per module may actually be decreasing. And there’s also a substantial influence on the surrounding climate of the vehicle on the EV batteries performance: thermal, whether it’s cooling or heating, challenges are complex and sometimes require new methods.

I’m going to go over a few of them together with us today. Efficient thermal management is critical to the EV battery design and each design may call for a unique solution. 3M has several types of thermal products, each with unique attributes that help enable superior cooling. Heat flow is affected by effective thermal resistance and thermal conductivity. We utilize chemistry to provide superior or the right degree of wet out conformability. In some of our products, our chemistry is basically acrylic based with low siloxane outgassing which can be most beneficial in use around sensitive electronics. All of our products are manufactured with ceramic fillers which provide electrically insulated solutions.

In thermal application these applications could be cell to pack, cell to frame, heat sink bonding, thermal connections to bus bars, or modules over a cooling plate. Let me briefly provide product examples of 3M thermal pads, thermal gap fillers, and thermal tapes. The first product example is a thermal tape. 3M thermally conductive acrylic tape 8926 is widely used on assemblies that need quick stick and high adhesion for a heat transfer solution. Think of it as a pressure sensitive adhesive on steroids. 8926 is used today in many automotive and LED lighting applications because this tape is available in a roll. Automotive tiers look to Boyd for inside insights on how to best deliver die cut solutions and 3M 8926 is part of that solution. Potential applications could be battery cell to module to cold plate bonding, relays, modules, packaging to bus bars, definitely integrated circuit heat dissipation in any kind of electronic components, maybe even on an inverter. 8926 is UL 94 v0 rated and has a thermal conductivity in a high adhesion pressure sensitive tape of 1.5 watts per meter kelvin. It’s a high performing tape. The second thermal portfolio are called 3M thermal gap pads. Here 3M leverages their acrylic chemistry to develop products with the right level of thermal conductivity along with the right level of compressibility. With products as soft as a candy gummy bear to some of the other go-to products such as 5590h, 3M gap pads are the right solution to address the trend to reduce vehicle weight.

3M acrylic gap pads are in fact 20% lighter weight than silicone chemistry equivalents. This is a key attribute of the thermal gap pad portfolio. Weight reduction to improve EV battery distance applications between cells or between modules or maybe the module in the cold plate. 3M has a long history of supplying thermal pad solutions for EV battery designs. 5590H has 2 watt per meter kelvin, a shore value of a about 70, and is also rated UL 94 v0. Very good for battery cell to module and module to cold plate applications. One of our newer products is a dispensable gap filler. TC6000 and TC7000 are excellent gap fillers where inline automation is required for high volume output or where gaps are in fact wider than what a traditional gap pad could fill. Again, potential applications could be inside a module inside a pack between the module and the cold plate. Take note of the thermal conductivity as well as the tensile strength of the products. TC6000 is more of a semi-structural gap filler while TC7000 is more like a structural bond gap. We spoke briefly about climate effects on EV battery. Here is a newer 3M product that helps maintain battery temperatures to reduce battery pack warming or helps reduce its cooling speed. Think of it as a blanket for a battery pack. I like how the two graphs in the slide here include data from the southern tip of south America during winter and a hot Brazilian summer. This battery enhancement material 1807S, think of it as a sweater for a battery pack.

Here is yet another example of a 3M thermal solution. It’s called direct immersion cooling. It utilizes a Novec, a 3M product that is stable, non-flammable, non-conductive, and non-toxic. These properties address the key industry trends for eMobility. For more information on this thermal product please contact our website and get in touch with the appropriate application engineers. The third design challenge falls into the category of assembly or think of it as bonding or joining or sealing. There are many challenges related to the final assembly and when 3M and Boyd partner together, we can find the right combination of chemistry and functionality to lower assembly costs and increase reliability. These types of assembly solutions address trends such as light weighting, provide design flexibility, high efficiency and assembly, shortens cycle time. Through being die-cut parts and can be combined with other technologies for combined functionality. 3M adhesives are at our core and this key building block is found in all of our businesses and these adhesives come in a range of formats for simple bonding or joining.

Automotive customers have relied on 3M tapes for over 60 years for demanding applications. These same customers look to our structural adhesive chemistry. This continuum of technology from left to right show the breadth of products available for your design challenges. Automotive customers rely on 3M tapes for bonding and joining applications. With so many adhesive chemistries and formats, it’s easy to find the right balance of tape properties to deliver consistent performance for demanding applications, including cell to cell bonding, mounting insulation inserts, or even bonding dissimilar materials. 3M is the world leader in pressure sensitive adhesive technology. One example of this product leadership is found in our 300 LSE adhesive chemistry. 3M transfer tape 9472LE is an excellent choice for bonding low surface energy substrates. This chemistry already satisfies a wide range of automotive and OEM specifications and customers have relied on 300 LSE adhesive chemistry for over 30 years. Excellent anti-lifting properties ability to bond around round or curvy substrates. 300 LSE adhesive is available in a range of calipers and thicknesses as well as double coated tape formats. The second category is referred to as structural adhesives. Our adhesive chemistry replaces mechanical fasteners and are a very good fit for EV battery assembly, battery floor to frame, battery frame to cover, battery floor to cooling or base plates, or even battery module side panels.

I put together this slide to provide a specific product examples for EV battery assembly. Prismatic cell bonding could possibly use our multi-material composite urethane adhesives DP6310S or even a scotch weld epoxy DP125. There are solutions for assembly to housing and cold plate bonding with the DP420 or DP460 and cell to module or to side plate bonding. You can find other adhesives for that application. DP stands for duo pack and these two-part epoxies are easy to dispense and cure without heat. I do like talking about DP125 as while this is a structural bond, it also is flexible and is a particular interest in cylindrical cell bonding other electronic assemblies. Look for thermal performance or even low outgassing solutions. 3M EMSD offers electronic grade epoxies for these applications as well thermally conductive epoxy TC2810 as well as a low outgassing for aerospace applications, DP460EG.

The last product I wanted to highlight is a form-in-place gasket. Some EV battery designs are in need of a way to access a battery module while still sealing out elements. 3M SZ1000 is a two-part silicone-based gasket material that cures in place on the substrate. Think of SZ1000 as a gasket applied to a battery tray or lid. While I’ve reviewed specific products and applications in bonding thermal and insulating applications, we do always want you to test, validate, and verify in your own unique application. I know that was a lot of information but know that we strive to improve lives. That’s our company vision and it’s how we work together with our preferred converter partner Boyd who plays a vital role to enable our customer’s next generation of technology. I’d like to say thank you to each and every one of you for attending and spending time with me here today. Now I’d like to turn the conversation over to the Boyd Corporation and my friend Louisa.

Hello everybody, my name is Louisa and today I’m going to be talking about engineered material solutions that are critical to EV battery applications. Let’s first start out with a little bit of background on Boyd. Boyd has been a leader in our industry for nearly 100 years. We currently do a little bit over a billion dollars in revenue each year and one of our big mentalities is in region, for region. So we can offer local support to our customers and help simplify supply chain and logistics by producing parts close to where they are needed. We have a deep engineering knowledge with over 325 design engineers and we have more than 12 global design centers, so we can offer local design support. It’s also important to note we have a very healthy revenue mix of industrial, cloud, eMobility, and mobile and consumer. Our goal is to anticipate trends in the industry, familiarize ourselves with the challenges our customers face, and find solutions to help solve those problems quickly to help you get to market faster. We have a huge global reach with manufacturing in North America, Europe, and Asia. We have a very large focus on eMobility with nine IATF certified sites. One of our newest sites is located in Juarez, Mexico. This is a state-of-the-art flagship facility and we have the capability to manufacture both thermal management parts as well as converted parts in that facility. I also want to highlight that we will have a location in Poland coming online in Q4. Innovation is a huge focus for us we are constantly innovating in our factories to create unique process capabilities. This allows us to provide best-in-class tolerances and gives us the ability to manufacture complex material stack ups and minimize material scrap.

All of these things combined help to create better quality parts, unique solutions, and provide better prices for our customers. So why trust Boyd with your application? We have a tremendous amount of experience in eMobility applications with over 2 million installations in eMobility vehicles and 60-plus years of field-proven performance within the automotive industry. We also have a global coverage model that supports both OEMs and tier 1 suppliers. So let’s dive into the fun stuff. Let’s turn our focus over to battery solutions and applications. In particular, there are three main designs of battery modules: pouch, cylindrical, and prismatic. If you look at some of the most popular OEMS, they use cylindrical cells. Other OEMs and battery module companies focus on pouch and prismatic cell technology. Cylindrical cells are stable, they’re inexpensive, and they last a long time and due to their widespread and standardized use, they offer a more robust automation process and better manufacturing techniques and they provide a more consistent product typically than pouch cells. Pouch cells on the other hand are very lightweight, but they can also be more vulnerable to damage from humidity and high temperatures. This can reduce their lifespans and increase their overall costs because they’ll need to be replaced more often. Prismatic cells and pouch cells are not standardized across industries which can make them more expensive to produce. That said, their rectangular shapes utilize limited space better so when you look at all of the different solutions and applications around, battery engineered materials are used starting from the cell level all the way up through module pack and vehicle level.

In the vehicle level we see a lot of gaskets, sealing, insulation, and in the pack level we also see these, but we also see thermal needs such as liquid cold plates and thermal interface materials. On the module level we start to see thermal runaway requirements and on the cell level we start to see cell to cell bonding and insulation requirements. So here’s an EV battery that has been exploded to share how each of these applications comes into play. So just under the lid, you’ll see a liquid cold plate. There’s usually a seal or a gasket around the perimeter here to help protect the internal components. Below that we have the battery cells which are surrounded by a layer of thermal runaway protection. Below the cells, we move into more thermal management this time with thermal interface materials. And the entire thing is enclosed in a battery housing. So, let’s dive a little bit deeper into specific cell level applications. We typically see very strict thermal runaway requirements around the cell. Mica is a very common material in today’s EV market and it’s used as a high temperature incombustible barrier for electrically isolating battery packs and other critical components. Some common use cases of this may be in batteries like isolators or thermal shielding. We also see this in chargers and EV stations a lot. What’s important to note is that 3M has a variety of materials that can help with thermal runaway protection and partnered with Boyd, we have the ability to provide multi-layer stack-ups where we combine these critical materials in order to help prevent thermal runaway failures.

Now, let’s talk about cell to cell bonding. When it comes to prismatic cells, we can provide PSA recommendations with the help of 3M to bond the cells together. In order to provide more structural integrity with a PSA you don’t have to worry about cure time or the mess of a liquid and if you have flame or electrical requirements, 3M also has plenty of material options to meet those needs and we can cut them with very tight tolerances. Electrical insulation is also very critical here. You can see there’s an insulation layer that wraps around the cell to prevent spark voltage between the internal critical components that can lead to shorting or fire in the stack up. There you’ll see we’ve combined 3M double coated tape with some copper, and we’ve put a PET cover on the top as well so we can take all of these different adhesives, insulation materials, and combine them into a multi-layer stack up for you that’s ready to go with an alignment liner so it’s easy to place during manufacturing. Now let’s take a look at module level applications. We also see thermal runaway used in the module level similar to what we saw in the cell level, but here we also see the use of compression pads and bus bars. Compression pads are very critical because they provide a layer between the cells to compensate when there’s thermal changes and the cells swell. They also provide a protection barrier if there’s a collision and we always want to minimize any impact on the battery, so we can offer a wide range of foams such as polyurethanes and different adhesive combinations that can create the right compression set based on whatever you’re looking for. 3M also offers a variety of dielectric adhesives and we can use these to protect the flexible printed circuits within the battery assemblies. These dielectric materials and adhesives have been tested for breakdown voltages and dielectric strength requirements and we can die cut these with very tight tolerances.

So now, let’s take a look at the pack level. In the pack level, we see similar applications that I highlighted in the module and cell level such as electrical insulation and cell wrapping. We also see the use of compression pads. I’m going to highlight cold plates and thermal interface materials since I haven’t touched on those yet. So, if you’re working on a liquid cold plate application, we have the ability to help you design and develop a custom lightweight cold plate and then incorporate engineered material solutions all as one package. So the reason I mention this is because thermal interface materials are very important when it comes to liquid cold plates. So, let’s turn over to that. Next, thermal interface materials are absolutely critical when it comes to transferring heat between the cooling plate and the battery module. We always want to pull the heat away from the sensitive components. We can help recommend thermal interface materials based on the thermal conductivity needs, hardness and thickness needs that you have for your application. This is where we can really add a lot of value and be a one-stop-shop and provide you with a liquid cooling plate and a thermal interface material all in one.

Last but not least, let’s talk vehicle level. So electrical insulation is very important here just as we highlighted in the cell level, but I’m going to focus mostly on the seals and gaskets and EMI shielding. Having a seal or gasket around the battery pack is essential because this is what’s going to protect against all of the harsh conditions your battery pack is going to see on the road, whether that’s liquids, gases, particles and we want to make sure we’re protecting this and avoiding any catastrophic failures to the battery. Depending on what kind of requirements you have, we can help recommend the right material that’s going to create a long-lasting seal. We can also apply adhesive to this to make sure there’s absolutely no leaks. EMI shielding is used when you want to block electromagnetic waves that would otherwise interfere. The common material types we see in these type of applications are typically conductive foams, foils, and absorbers. These can all help to manage these interfering energies and improve reliability. We offer a wide range of EMI shielding products. We have a long history of supplying EMI parts into the enterprise segment.

So, now I want to summarize the various applications we just reviewed and touch on a couple additional material types that bring a lot of that value to battery applications. So, the compression pads. Remember, those are going to help manage the swelling of cells. When they see temperature changes and thermal expansion, the seals and gaskets are going to protect your battery from harsh environmental conditions. The thermal runaway materials are going to offer protection in case of a fire and will help to suppress the flame. The thermal interface materials will help pull heat away from those sensitive components and keep them running optimally. The electrical insulators will help control spark voltage. The venting films and seals will help with pressure fluctuations. And last but not least, EMI shielding materials will reduce the chance of having a malfunction due to electromagnetic wave interference. So now that we’ve covered all of the critical applications and material types that go along with each of those applications, let’s dive into how we can support you on your designs. So as I mentioned before, material selection is a big part of what we do and when we team up with 3M, we have a huge portfolio of products we can choose from to help solve your problems. Besides the material being important, so is the design. We want to help look at your design early on and make recommendations to make it more manufacturable and cost effective. Once we have a good design and materials selected, the next stage would be to make you some samples and prototypes so you can start testing. If you need additional support with testing, we offer some of those capabilities in-house through functional testing and peel and adhesion testing as well. And finally, when it comes to making your parts we have a variety of manufacturing capabilities, assembly capabilities, and we even have a clean room if that is one of your requirements.

So, I want to give you some examples of how we provide DFM and DFC feedback. So sometimes we can offer design alternatives that reduce materials, reduce material usage or scrap, and therefore can reduce the overall cost. We can also look at adding a pull tab for ease of assembly or adding intricate alignment liners with different holes that fit into jigs to make your assembly process faster and smoother. Here you’ll see an example of a part that we enveloped, sealed, and held extremely tight tolerances on. So, through the right tooling and machines and operator knowledge, we’re able to achieve all of these different things that, when combined, give you guys a top-quality part at a very cost-effective price. This is an example of a multi-layer stack up where we provided DFM feedback and combined all these different parts into one to make the assembly process easier. So here you’ll see there’s a layer of foam, adhesive mesh, and then PET carrier, and so by having all of these parts in one stack up it allows the assembly process to move faster and reduce any chance of these parts not being aligned during the assembly. So, when it comes to manufacturing, we have a multitude of different equipment to make your parts based on the size and the materials. So, for example, if you have a very high-volume application, we may use rotary. If you have a very large part, we may use a clamshell press. And if you have a part that requires a very thick material we may use a hydraulic press. I also want to reiterate that we have prototyping capabilities, so we have a laser and plotter machine so we can get materials in and laser cut some parts for you with different stack-ups you can test a variety of materials and we can get those to you very quickly to keep you on schedule.

If you also need functional testing done, we offer a full range of testing equipment such as humidity testing, an autoclave tester, and vibration tester for reliability testing. We also offer peeling and adhesion testing for PSAs if that is something that you need. And last but not least, I just want to highlight that we’re always thinking about how these parts are going to be applied later on, so if this is something that’s going to involve a pick-and-place robot or something along those lines during assembly, let us know and we can help with configurations and liner recommendations and layouts that will make that process easier down the road for you.

Joe and Louisa, thank you both so much for that great presentation. We do have some questions that have come in from the attendees right now so we are going to move into answering those. So now, our first question. Louisa, this one is for you. Does Boyd provide samples or prototyping? So, yes. We work very closely with 3M to help provide raw materials and samples as well as cut the material into prototypes for you. Many of our manufacturing locations have prototyping capabilities like CNC, laser, or waterjet, so we can provide these to you in a very quick turnaround time to allow engineers to qualify the materials and the designs very quickly. Okay, great, thank you so much for that answer. Next one: if we work with a company like Boyd or 3M, who owns the design? So while we’re here to help provide material recommendations and design suggestions to get you the best performance in manufacturability, ultimately the design is yours, so we always ask that our customers test the parts in their application to validate because each application is different and each customer has different testing requirements, and we want to make sure that it works in your specific application.

Okay, great, thank you so much for that answer. Another question here: how do we get started working on an application together? What would you need from us? So, typically, we would want to start by having a call to review the application and understand your requirements. If you already have a part drawing, you can share that as well that would be very helpful for us to review, and from there we can work together with 3M to provide material recommendations and our engineering team can review your prints for DFM feedback. If we see any opportunities to improve the design by making it easier to manufacture or easier to assemble down the road, we will provide this feedback through a formal DFM process.

Thank you guys all very much for tuning in! Really appreciate your time. Okay, thank you so much for that last answer! We are going to wrap things up right there. I want to say a huge thank you to Joe and Louisa for being part of this presentation and for all of our audience members for being part of this webinar event. Take care and we will speak with you soon.