Analysis of capacity fading effect on Lithium Cobalt cells caused by pulse current technique in fast charging methods

Charging a battery in a short time is important for portable devices. Many techniques have been developed to find out the proper method for fast charging. One of those techniques that has been patented in several fast charging methods is pulse current technique. This technique implements pulse current with adjusting pulse wide and voltage threshold in a certain values. In this paper, the capacity fading effects caused by the current pulse in lithium cobalt cells were investigated. The experiment was done by applying pulse current at high-level SOC to charge four cylindrical lithium cobalt cells. The Capacity of each cell was checked every 50 charge-discharge cycles. The experiment result shows that the changing capacity in each cell forms patterns alike. As if there was a slight increament on their capacities at first checking but rapidly decreasing at the next check. Then, their capacities continue to decrease slowly but the more often the charge-discharge cycling, the battery lifetime decreased. This research has provided analysis of pulse current effect on lithium cobalt capacity fading that should be noted as a reference in applying current pulse for fast charging methods.