Methods and systems for diagnosis of failure mechanisms and for prediction of lifetime of metal batteries

A method for analyzing operation of a metal-based battery cell, the method comprising:

• providing a metal-based battery cell comprising a cathode, an anode, and an electrolyte between the cathode and the anode;
• cycling the metal-based battery cell;
• measuring, over the cycling, a rest voltage and Coulombic efficiency (CE) of the metal-based battery cell, without conducting additional testing, to provide rest voltage and CE profiles indicating, by trends indicated therein, at least one of an increased cell impedance failure mechanism, a loss of metal inventory failure mechanism, or an electrolyte depletion failure mechanism;
• providing an anode-free battery cell comprising the cathode, a current collector, and the electrolyte between the cathode and the current collector, the anode-free battery cell not comprising the anode of the metal-based battery cell;
• cycling, over fewer than about 100 cycles, the anode-free battery cell;
• measuring, over the fewer than about 100 cycles, a discharge capacity of the anode-free battery cell;
• fitting a discharge capacity curve to the measured discharge capacity to discern a capacity retention per cycle of the anode-free battery cell;
• and
• based in part on the capacity retention per cycle discerned from the anode-free battery cell, and without measuring discharge capacities of the metal-based battery cell directly, predicting a cycle life of the metal-based battery cell.