United States

Current rapid growth of the e-mobility sector is driving demand and innovation in the manufacture of batteries. This is particularly evident in the development of laser-based processes for battery cell manufacturing. Whether its cylindrical, pouch or prismatic all battery cells require foils to be cut. Industrial demands are quite demanding and varied due to complexity of the foil materials as well as the electrode designs, making it a challenge to identify the most appropriate laser technology. Requirements range from the slitting of thin bare metal foils to profiling of coated materials where both bare foil and coated material need to be cut. The materials break into anodes and cathodes each posing different challenges as manufacturers require highest possible processing speeds with the highest possible edge quality. Pulsed lasers are becoming the tool of choice, while many foils can be adequately cut with ns lasers some material combinations benefit from shorter ps pulses. This contribution gives a broad overview of the challenges of laser cutting of battery foils and explores the pros and cons of ns vs ps for different materials. The analysis focuses on achievable processing speeds as well as cut edge quality and looks at a variety of laser parameters such as pulse duration, pulse energy and peak power. The influence of laser parameters such as spot size, working fields and processing strategies are discussed. This work shoes that choices are not always straight forward, and users are left to balance the need between Cost – Quality – Productivity.

ICALEO 2023

Battery Foil Cutting – Should You Use ns or ps Laser Sources?

ps laser

cutting

battery foil

ns laser

**General Chair Welcome**

![](https://assets.underline.io/markdown_image/1/image/d6e6dddc08bf2371b9136ea9c18dc5ab.png)              

Welcome to ICALEO® 2023!
	
We were excited to host the world’s leading international conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics in Chicago. The Laser has been shown to have the potential to revolutionize solutions for major global challenges like energy usage and supply, global warming, and CO2 footprint. Even the fusion energy breakthrough is based on laser technology. The conference, with peer-reviewed scientific and technical presentations, focused on the newest results in Micro Applications, Macro Applications, Additive Manufacturing, Beam Shaping and Frontiers in Laser Applications. Additionally, the Battery-Manufacturing Track gave an overview of the process combined with the newest advances in laser application results. 

The Business Session brought the business aspect and environment of the laser to the audience and the possibility to discuss with seasoned industry leaders from around the world. 

Whether this is the first time you are hearing about ICALEO or you are a longtime attendee, you will find something of interest, new ideas, and an excellent opportunity to network with other laser specialists worldwide. 

**Klaus Löffler **  
ICALEO General Chair   
Managing Director, Precitec GmbH

**What is ICALEO?**

ICALEO® brings together the brightest minds, seasoned professionals, and pioneering researchers from around the world. With a laser-focused agenda, ICALEO offers an exceptional platform to delve into the cutting-edge advancements, diverse applications, and transformative research that define lasers and electro-optics.

Participants will be immersed in a dynamic environment that fosters collaborative learning, networking, and idea exchange. Through engaging plenary presentations, technical sessions, an industry business panel, and networking events, attendees gain insights into the forefront of laser technology. From industrial applications to medical breakthroughs, additive manufacturing to materials processing, ICALEO covers the entire spectrum of laser-related disciplines. Moreover, the event serves as a launching pad for synergistic partnerships, paving the way for professionals to forge connections that shape the future of our industry.

Join us in Chicago and be part of an unparalleled gathering that challenges the boundaries of possibility within lasers and electro-optics. As we convene to share knowledge, explore innovations, and cultivate collaborations, ICALEO stands as a pivotal force driving the evolution of this transformative technology.

**Who attended?**

ICALEO is tailor-made for professionals, researchers, academics, and enthusiasts who are deeply passionate about the world of lasers and electro-optics. If you're an industry trailblazer, an academic luminary, an aspiring expert, or a postgraduate student looking to dive into the latest developments and trends, this is an event you won't want to miss.

Industrial leaders seeking to stay ahead of the curve in their fields, engineers working on laser applications, and manufacturing experts interested in additive manufacturing and materials processing will find ICALEO to be an invaluable platform. Researchers and scientists exploring the forefront of laser technology, from fundamental principles to groundbreaking applications, will also discover a wealth of knowledge and networking opportunities.

Medical professionals investigating laser-based medical advancements, entrepreneurs seeking to innovate with lasers, educators aiming to stay updated with the latest in laser education, and policy makers shaping the industry's landscape are all essential attendees. Whether you're an established expert or a rising star, the 42nd annual ICALEO promises to offer a diverse ecosystem of expertise, connections, and knowledge sharing that caters to the laser and electro-optics communities.

**Fields Represented:**

* Entrepreneurs and Innovators
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Please register for the ICALEO 2023 Conference to join the event.

ICALEO® brings together the brightest minds, seasoned professionals, and pioneering researchers from around the world. With a laser-focused agenda, ICALEO offers an exceptional platform to delve into the cutting-edge advancements, diverse applications, and transformative research that define lasers and electro-optics.

technical paper

Laser-based manufacturing has become a key enabling technology in the production of batteries and battery cells for e-mobility applications. Several applications, in fact, have already been industrialized for welding, cutting and stripping with lasers. Cutting, in particular, has to fulfil many very stringent constraints, such as: highly reflective materials (aluminum, copper), very low thickness (6-12 µm), on-the-fly processing, high quality of the cutting surface. According to those considerations, the present paper deals with the application of remote cutting of 8 µm thick aluminum and copper foils by means of a galvo scanner and two different fiber laser sources: single mode CW and nanosecond pulsed ones. The experimental activity is devoted to understanding the feasibility of the process and to point out pros and cons of the two different lasers involved. The cutting edges are analyzed by means of optical and SEM microscopy and confocal profilometry, in order to characterize the quality of the cutting, the presence of burr and the extension of the heat affected zone. The process is also characterized in terms of maximum achievable speed in order to understand the limits of both laser and galvo scanning system and some considerations are drawn on the role of the typical fine tuning parameters of the galvo scanner on the possibility to achieve high cutting speeds in an on-the-fly process.

High Speed Laser Cutting of Ultra-Thin Metal Foils for Battery Cell Production

Temporal beam-shaping is a powerful tool for micromachining of various materials with femtosecond lasers. In this contribution, we present our advances of dielectrics microprocessing with an ultrafast laser source which can operate either in the MHz- or in the GHz-burst regime. We compare top-down percussion drilling in glasses with a Gaussian beam in both burst regimes. The GHz-burst mode allows for obtaining crack-free holes with an outstanding surface quality of the inner walls and featuring an almost cylindrical shape without shifting the beam focus nor the sample. The deepest hole is measuring 3.7 mm length and 25 µm entrance diameter, corresponding to an aspect ratio of 150, which is the highest reported so far with femtosecond GHz-burst drilling to the best of our knowledge. Moreover, we show a combination of temporal and spatial beam shaping for cutting of transparent dielectric materials. A Bessel beam is formed using an axicon, and we compare the cutting results in both burst operation regimes. We illustrate the influence of the laser beam parameters such as the burst energy and the pitch between consecutive Bessel beams on the machining quality of the cutting plane and provide processing windows for both burst regimes. In both regimes, dust- and chipping-free cutting has been achieved for glass samples of up to 1 mm thickness. However, the best cutting plane quality in terms of surface roughness is obtained in the GHz-burst regime.

Temporal and Spatial Beam-Shaping for Innovative Femtosecond Laser Microprocessing of Dielectrics

In the field of laser material processing, laser beam cutting is still the commercially most important application. Several 10,000 new 2D flatbed cutting systems are built every year. At the same time, laser cutting of larger sheet thicknesses is increasingly coming into focus of potential customers. Thus, laser powers &gt;20 kW are becoming more and more important to significantly increase productivity in laser cutting, especially for sheet thicknesses &gt;10 mm. Furthermore, laser powers of &gt;40 kW have the potential to compete with plasma cutting, providing better edge quality, less material consumption due to smaller cutting kerfs at higher energy efficiency, thus also lowering CO2 emissions. This market demand is challenged by the intrinsic thermal focus shift of the individual optical elements within the cutting system. Today, optical coatings for up to 20 kW of laser power are often optimized to balance performance vs. economic aspects. Minimizing focus shift can be done by, first, reducing energy deposition within AR-coatings, second, pre-correcting actual shifts by means of approximation, and third, measuring the shift and correcting it in a closed loop control. A detailed analysis of the in-situ thermal focus shift in real applications will be presented, providing an optimal combination of listed measures.

Strategies for Reducing the Thermally Induced Focus-shift in High Power Laser Cutting

The ISO 11146-1 is a well know standard for measuring the M-Square value of a laser or laser system. The multi-spot method of measuring the M-Square against the ISO 11146-1 standard has not, to date, been measured one to one against this standard using both the traditional scan method and the multi-spot method. This work validates the multi-spot method against the standard by using the identical optical setup and simply changing the software algorithm to accommodate both methods while staying within the ISO 11146-1 parameters.&nbsp; We then compare the results for the same laser within a very short span of time. This work covers the results of three (3) different ISO compliant measurement methods: full caustic multi-spot, scan method of one spot at a time and a smaller number of multi-spots within 3 different Rayleigh ranges of the beam caustic. The multi-spot method has the significant advantage of providing an ISO compliant measurement within a single laser pulse whether it be a femtosecond, picosecond, nanosecond, or millisecond pulse. The traditional scan method can only provide a time averaged measurement and is not possible in making a single pulse M<sup>2</sup> measurement.&nbsp; The multi-spot, therefore, provides instant feedback of the laser performance and reduces the optimization time.

Advances in Laser Cutting Thick Sheet Metal with “Light Tunnel Generators” Materials Processing

In the naval applications, as well as for infrastructure and construction sectors, welding of thick plates (&gt;15 mm) has become of crucial importance. Nowadays, the common techniques involve several passes of traditional Gas-Metal Arc Welding (GMAW) to fill a gap with a precise geometry. These techniques are, inevitably, time consuming due to the necessity of multiple passes, material consuming because of the volume of the gap which needs to be filled and complicated due to the precise preparation of the joints. To overcome these drawbacks, we propose here a Hybrid Laser-Arc Welding (HLAW) technique in a configuration which allowed us to achieve a sound weld of two plates, 20 mm thick, of naval steel EH40 in a single pass. The goal has been obtained with a 16 kW fiber laser and a welding speed of 1500 mm/min. The most important result of this research is that the welds have been performed in a simple butt configuration, with straight edges of the plates and without any chamfer or additional preparation. Moreover, the length of the weld seam, 1 meter, guarantees the stability and the solidity of the process, its scalability over longer plates, and thus, an easy implementation on an industrial machine for massive production.<br>
This result opens the way to a faster, more reliable, and less costly process for the welding of thick plates. Furthermore, since the constant increase of the achievable laser power, there is the reasonable hope to push the single-pass maximum weldable thickness even further.

Welding of 20 MM Thick EH40 Steel by Means of a Single-Pass Hybrid Laser-Arc Welding Technique.

We present a framework for developing laser weld schedules featuring circular oscillation in the beam trajectory designed to reduce keyhole induced porosity in aluminum welds.&nbsp; Our approach focuses on minimizing the frequency of keyhole collapses during the welding process by stabilizing the keyhole with circular beam oscillation.&nbsp; The approach is guided by the hypotheses that if the oscillation period is less than the characteristic time of keyhole collapse, the keyhole can remain stable.&nbsp; The characteristic keyhole collapse time is governed by the melt density and surface tension, as well as the keyhole radius, which can be increased by utilizing a larger oscillation radius.&nbsp; By eliminating keyhole collapse, the creation of vapor bubbles in the melt flow can be avoided, thus eliminating a major source for weld porosity.&nbsp; &nbsp;To verify these hypotheses, experimental results from laser welding of 3 mm thick aluminum alloy (AA 5754) sheets are presented. The test results confirm that porosity is substantially reduced when the oscillation amplitudes are increased beyond predicted threshold values for different oscillation frequencies.&nbsp; These findings help to elucidate a new mechanism for improving keyhole stability in laser welding processes via laser beam oscillation and provide a framework for developing improved laser weld schedules.

Mechanism-Guided Approach for Porosity Reduction in Laser Welding of Thick Aluminum Sheets

Silicon heterojunction (SHJ) solar cells take advantage of the passivation properties of amorphous silicon: it can be easily doped, deposition temperatures are very low (below 200◦C), and it has very good passivation properties, but it has the drawback of very high sheet resistance for heterojunction emitters. An alternative to the use of a-Si:H in SHJ cells are transition metal oxide (TMO) films. These films have interesting properties as passivators and selective contacts for novel semiconductor devices, i.e. hole transport layers (HTL) or electron transport layers (ETL), and can be deposited on both electrodes of a solar cell. In this work, we present a complete study of the laser ablation of three transition metals that show good properties as p-type front contacts for n-type crystalline silicon heterojunction solar cells: WOx, VOx and MoOx. We characterize the ablation process of films deposited on crystalline silicon using laser sources of three different wavelengths (355 nm, 532 nm, and 1064 nm) and in two temporal regimes(picoseconds and nanoseconds). We measure the fluence threshold to remove the transition metal oxide (TMO) film and to induce the damage in the crystalline silicon substrate, determining the parametric window of the process. We also studied the morphology to analyze the relationships between crater dimensions and ablation parameters using confocal microscopy. Complete removal of the three different TMO films was achieved without damaging the silicon substrate. Results of diode isolation and their electrical characteristics are presented, showing the quality of the laser isolation processes.

Selective Laser Ablation of Transition Metal Oxide Thin Films for SHJ Solar Cells

Thermal barrier coating (TBC) has been widely applied to jet engine parts as the protection layer for underneath metal working at high temperature. The ceramic based coating, however will suffer from harsh environment such as hot air and sands can lead to undesired coating spallation and crack failure. This paper introduced a new laser process to improve the TBC resistance to spallation and thermal strain tolerance. Ultrafast laser system&nbsp;&nbsp;has been used to slot micro-scale grooves on coating surface with optimized geometry and function property. Coating life extension is demonstrated with laser slotted coupon and parameter study. Pros and cons of laser slotting compared with other machining methods is analyzed as well.

Pulsed UV Laser-Assisted Doping of Semi-insulating 4H-SiC Substrates for MWIR Detector.

Aerospike engines are a promising type of rocket engine with the potential to significantly improve the efficiency of rocket propulsion systems. Unlike traditional bell-shaped engines, aerospikes have a cone-shaped external contour that allows for more efficient combustion of the propellant in a variety of environmental conditions. The design of aerospike engines presents a challenging task due to their complex internal and external geometries. However, the recent advancements in additive manufacturing (AM) have made it possible to create these complex shapes with greater accuracy and precision. This contribution addresses the complete process&nbsp;chain of an additively manufactured aerospike&nbsp;breadboard engine using kerosene and hydrogen&nbsp;peroxide as propellants. The aerospike was&nbsp;fabricated by laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) using the&nbsp;nickel-based superalloy INCONEL® 718. In order to&nbsp;qualify the material and process for this application,&nbsp;an extensive material characterization campaign&nbsp;including density and roughness measurements,&nbsp;tensile tests at room temperature, 700 °C and&nbsp;900 °C, was conducted. In addition, various&nbsp;geometric features such as triangles, ellipses and&nbsp;circular shapes were generated to determine the&nbsp;maximum unsupported overhang and geometric&nbsp;accuracy. The results were taken into account in the&nbsp;design maturation of the manifold and the cooling&nbsp;channels of the aerospike breadboard engine. Postprocessing&nbsp;included heat treatment, milling, turning&nbsp;and eroding of interfaces, thermal barrier coating (TBC) of&nbsp;thermally stressed surfaces and laser welding of&nbsp;spike and shroud as well as quality assurance.

Process Qualification, Additive Manufacturing, and Post Processing of a Hydrogen Peroxide / Kerosene Aerospike Breadboard Engine

The feedstock capture efficiency on powder laser directed energy deposition is becoming a big challenge on the industrial use of L-DED process for the manufacturing of large-scale AM parts. The powder capture efficiency is dependent of process optimization and the tool-path. The current literature presents a huge range of usual powder efficiency, between 3 – 32% and some specific cases exceeding 90%. The powder-gas jet stream interact with the laser beam adding material locally onto the substrate. Part of this material is captured by the melt pool. The not captured material is affected by the laser beam, causing a material degradation. There is a lack on the literature for studies on the reusability of powder on the L-DED process. This paper presents a comprehensive study on the consequence of laser interaction with SS 316L metal powder particles during the L-DED process using a range of different powder characterization techniques to access the powder morphology, particle size distribution, chemical composition, followability and particle porosity. The study was conducted within eight powder reuse cycles, without adding virgin material to the powder batch. Reduction of PSD range, increase of circularity, improvement on the powder flowability were identified as consequences of powder reuse. The consequence of the laser interaction with particles was further explored using SEM, presenting the continuous modification of the particles across the eight reuse cycles. The oxygen content of the particles was also measured to access the O2 pick-up as a consequence of particle heating.

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