CPI and Illumion launch £480k project to advance battery electrode quality diagnostics

The Scope‑X project has secured £480,000 in funding through the Battery Innovation Programme, funded by the Department for Business and Trade and delivered by Innovate UK. The project will validate a novel approach to identifying battery electrode quality issues earlier in the manufacturing process. By detecting issues sooner, Scope‑X aims to reduce waste, improve manufacturing efficiency and support more sustainable battery production, helping manufacturers lower costs, improve product quality and reduce environmental impact.

If successful, the project could help manufacturers identify issues earlier in production, reducing late-stage scrap and rework while avoiding unnecessary use of critical battery materials, energy and processing time. Earlier intervention also has the potential to reduce the number of battery cells requiring recycling due to defects identified later in manufacture. 

Electric vehicle batteries are made up of many components, but one of the most important is the electrode – the layer that stores and releases energy. Small variations introduced during manufacturing can significantly affect battery performance, causing batteries to lose capacity more quickly, degrade faster over time or fail quality checks later in production. Because electrodes account for more than 60% of a battery cell’s material cost, identifying quality issues earlier could have a significant economic impact. 

Today, manufacturers typically assess electrodes using measurements such as thickness, weight and visible surface defects. While these approaches provide valuable quality information, they offer limited insight into how an electrode will perform once assembled into a battery cell. As a result, quality issues are often only identified after lengthy and costly cell assembly, formation, and testing. 

Scope‑X aims to address this challenge by validating Illumion’s Charge Photometry technology as a potential near-line diagnostic tool for battery manufacturing. The approach combines rapid electrochemical testing with highly sensitive measurements to create detailed maps of how charge moves across an electrode, providing a deeper understanding of electrode behaviour before cells are built. 

As part of the project, CPI will draw on its expertise in battery manufacturing to produce electrodes containing controlled process variations and known defects. These representative samples will enable the consortium to evaluate whether Charge Photometry can reliably identify issues that conventional inspection methods may miss, including failure modes linked to moisture exposure, particle integrity and electrode uniformity. 

Scrap rates during the early stages of battery manufacturing can reach up to 30%, meaning even small improvements in manufacturing yield can have a significant impact at scale. Reducing scrap by as little as 1 – 2% could translate into millions of pounds in avoided material, processing and rework costs annually for large-scale battery manufacturing facilities, while also reducing unnecessary waste and embedded carbon.

Dr Keri Goodwin, Chief Technologist at CPI, said:

“One of the biggest challenges in battery manufacturing is that quality issues are often only identified after significant time, materials and energy have already been invested in cell production. Scope‑X aims to explore whether a new generation of diagnostics can shift that decision point earlier. 

“CPI is supporting Illumion by providing high-quality and intentionally defective electrode coatings using our automated coating robot to demonstrate the feasibility of its novel quality detection system. If successful, approaches like this could have a significant impact on cost-effective cell manufacturing in the UK and beyond.” 

Dr Christoph Schnedermann, CEO and co-founder of Illumion, said:

“The battery industry needs better ways to identify quality issues before they become costly manufacturing problems. Scope‑X is an exciting opportunity to demonstrate how our Charge Photometry platform can provide a fundamentally new view of electrode quality, helping manufacturers detect functional defects earlier, reduce scrap and build better batteries more efficiently. 

“By combining Illumion’s diagnostic technology with CPI’s manufacturing expertise, we are taking an important first step towards bringing advanced electrode diagnostics into more efficient, scalable battery manufacturing.”