The popularization of Li ion technology, the need to give batteries a second life and the meteoric rise of connected objects mean that the battery is becoming a key element in our society - the equivalent of the heart in the human body. By analogy with medicine, we'll need to develop technical solutions to know our state of health (SOH) at all times, so that we can intervene in the event of malfunctions. All this requires reliable traceability of batteries, so that they can ultimately have a dual function/second life: they can be used for network applications after having been used for electric vehicles.

In this context, it is necessary to add value to the battery by introducing miniaturized sensors capable of transmitting/receiving information, so that the battery is no longer a black box and its SOH can be determined. A negative diagnosis will require treatment, and consequently the implementation of self-repair systems. These are issues far removed from our current activities, but extremely important for the future of Li ion battery research. It is this new "diagnosis/repair" of Li ion batteries that will be covered in the 2021 lecture. The various passive/non-passive, intrusive/non-intrusive diagnostic techniques will be discussed, with a particular focus on techniques based on the use of optical fibers.

As in medicine, battery diagnostics must go hand in hand with the development of self-repair systems. We will show how supramolecular chemistry can be put to good use in designing and engineering self-repairing polymers, while considering the self-repair engineering that can take place at the separator level via the realization of very specific encapsulation and functionalization chemistry. These lectures will be followed by seminars on the history of batteries and electrochemistry in general.