Thermal Adhesives Advance Battery Cell-to-Pack Design for EVs
These materials aim to manage heat while maintaining structural integrity across pouch, cylindrical, and prismatic cell architectures.
Effective thermal management is critical for high energy-density lithium-ion battery packs in electric vehicles, and manufacturers are turning to advanced thermally conductive adhesives to address heat generated during charge and discharge cycles.
What Happened
Thermal management in EV batteries relies on connecting cells and modules to cooling plates via thermally conductive materials such as gap fillers or adhesives. According to Parker Lord, these are typically two-component polymeric resins with ceramic fillers that displace air from surfaces and gaps. The company distinguishes between gap fillers, which exhibit lap shear strengths below 7 MPa (1015 psi), and structural adhesives, which exceed this threshold. Parker Lord has developed thermally conductive structural adhesives that combine bonding strength with thermal conductivity for EV battery manufacturing.
Why It Matters
Each cell form factor—pouch, cylindrical, and prismatic—presents distinct construction challenges. Pouch cells lack structural rigidity and use low surface energy polyethylene films that limit adhesive bond strength. Cylindrical cells require many units to achieve vehicle range and feature nickel-plated steel surfaces that can be difficult to bond. Prismatic cells face tolerance issues due to larger surface areas and thermal expansion stresses. Thermally conductive materials help mitigate these challenges while enabling cell-to-pack architectures that eliminate the need for intermediate modules, potentially reducing cost and weight.
The Bottom Line
Thermal adhesives and gap fillers play a growing role in EV battery pack design as manufacturers seek to balance heat removal with structural integrity across different cell form factors.
