Manufacturing method for traceability of battery electrodes with fiducial markers

A method of preparing electrodes comprising:

• i. providing a sheet of metal substrate which moves in a machine direction (MD);
• ii. applying one or more coatings of electrode material onto the sheet of metal substrate to form a moving sheet of metal substrate having one or more coated regions and one or more uncoated regions;
• iii. applying a series of reference markers and associated tracing codes onto the sheet of metal substrate, wherein step (ii) occurs before or after step (iii), to form a moving sheet of metal substrate having one or more coated regions and one or more uncoated regions wherein (a) in the case wherein step (ii) occurs before step (iii), the series of reference markers and the associated tracing codes are applied onto the one or more uncoated regions whereas (b) in the case wherein step (iii) occurs after step (ii), the series of reference markers and the associated tracing codes are applied onto the one or more uncoated regions and/or onto one or more coated regions;
• iv. recording the associated tracing codes that have been applied to create a database of the associated tracing codes;
• v. measuring a first physical property of the one or more of the coated regions along the MD to generate a measurement profile that is recorded wherein measurements of the first physical property are synchronized with the associated tracing codes from the database so that different portions of the measurement profile are associated with one or more accompanying the associated tracing codes, and
• after step (v), cutting the sheet of metal substrate to form a plurality of electrodes;
• and using the recorded associated tracing codes from the database to assign each electrode with a portion of the measurement profile that is recorded.

A method of monitoring a sheet of material comprising:

• i. advancing a sheet of material that moves in a machine direction (MD);
• ii. applying a series of MD position marks and corresponding position codes onto the sheet of material along the MD;
• iii. recording the corresponding position codes that have been applied to create a database of codes;
• and
• iv. measuring a physical property of the sheet of material along the MD to generate a measurement profile that is recorded wherein measurements of the physical property are synchronized with the corresponding position codes from the database so that different portions of the measurement profile are associated with one or more accompanying the corresponding position codes;
• and
• wherein step (iv) uses a first sensor that is mounted to a first scanner that traverses back and forth along a cross direction (CD) across the sheet of material wherein the first sensor measures first properties from first interrogations spots on the sheet of material.