Applications of Laser Welding in the Battery Manufacturing Industry
The battery manufacturing industry is increasingly becoming one of the major new challenges in 21st-century manufacturing. Although global annual battery production has reached tens of billions of units, traditional battery manufacturing technologies can no longer meet the rapidly expanding range of battery applications in terms of performance and cost efficiency. Most of us are well aware of battery applications in hybrid vehicles, plug-in hybrid vehicles, and fully electric vehicles. Beyond automotive applications, cost-effective, high-performance batteries hold significant appeal for power and alternative energy sectors. Today, “high performance and affordability” should be used to clearly describe and recognize batteries' pivotal role in addressing our energy challenges. As market demands for higher energy storage capacity and longer battery life, coupled with lower weight and cost requirements, continue to rise, manufacturing challenges remain to be resolved.
Among the diverse battery technologies deployed across these industries, multiple variants exist to meet varied application needs. Furthermore, a single battery type may feature numerous product form factors, potentially necessitating different manufacturing approaches. Newer batteries predominantly adopt cylindrical or planar designs. Battery cells are stacked, packaged, or arrayed to combine individual units into series and parallel circuits. Connections between cells may involve similar or dissimilar metallic materials, with two or more distinct layers. Despite design diversity, a common challenge emerges across these concepts: the need to join increasingly thin, varied metallic materials at higher speeds—a domain where laser welding excels. Next, Chuangxiang Laser explains how the battery manufacturing industry leverages laser welding machines.
A widely recognized and frequently employed laser welding solution is based on galvo-scanning laser welding machines. While this “remote welding” technology is not particularly novel within the broader laser welding landscape, advancements in scanning heads and laser performance are driving its growing prominence. Increasingly powerful fiber lasers emit near-perfect beams that can now be fully utilized at the absolute limits of welding speed, unaffected by acceleration constraints that plague other welding motion systems. This beam quality also ensures a larger field of view, longer operational lifetimes, and a wider range of incident angles. It enables simultaneous welding of multiple joints in numerous battery assembly configurations.
Galvanometer-scanned laser welding is suitable for manufacturing various battery components.
Other advancements in high-speed galvanometer-scanned laser welding include emerging “flying beam” welding technology. In this case, the required extensive coverage area, high welding speed, and extremely high acceleration are achieved through precise synchronized scanning axes (A, B) and mutually perpendicular mechanical motion directions (X, Y). This high-performance laser welding technology is currently being applied to battery welding and addressing challenges arising from fuel cell welding process development.
The final challenge in battery laser welding lies in process stability and quality assurance. Given the high speed and flexibility of laser welding, manufacturing success also depends on the performance of other mechanical components within the entire system to rapidly achieve good welds. This is an extremely demanding task, particularly considering the small weld dimensions, high welding speeds, and the enormous number of welds required in battery production. Furthermore, given the weld count required in final battery encapsulation, 6σ-grade weld quality is insufficient; higher quality levels are necessary. Solutions to these primary challenges—process route optimization and weld quality assurance—largely rely on high-speed image acquisition and analysis. While some methods have been tested in lower-speed laser welding applications, further enhancements in speed and precision are essential to fully unlock laser welding's potential in battery manufacturing.