From the journal Digital Discovery Peer review history

10-Aug-2022

Dear Dr Stein:

Manuscript ID: DD-COM-05-2022-000046
TITLE: Robotic cell assembly to accelerate battery research

Thank you for your submission to Digital Discovery, published by the Royal Society of Chemistry. I sent your manuscript to reviewers and I have now received their reports which are copied below.

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Reviewer 1

The present manuscript describe the robotic system for assembling coin-type battery cell. This system can contribute to accelerate battery test with high reproducibility compared with the human doing same experiments. However, concept itself is not unique. In addition, in the manuscript, the details of robotic system is not described. Thus, for readers, it is difficult to get deep information for experimental procedure. In the manuscript, the analysis of the obtained electrochemical data is also described. However, discussion is poor. Thus, the manuscript need to be largely revised to be accepted in peer-review journal.

Assembling process of standard lithium ion battery cell is alreadly manufacturaized.
For example, please find the following
https://www.hitachi-power-solutions.com/en/product/equipment/production-line-solution/core/automatic-assembly/index.html
https://www.hi-mecha.co.jp/en/business/products/liion/


The details of experimental setup should be provides in simillar level in following scientifc papers.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00542-019-04368-5
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666386420302861?via%3Dihub
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0378775322006954?via%3Dihub

Compared with above references, the description of the present manuscript is poor.
I think the scientific paper should provied enough information for readers to reproduce the most of the setup.

Reviewer 2

I think that this is an overall great manuscript from the perspective of using robust automation of science to develop a more statistically significant overview of the reproducibility (or irreproducibility) of battery science. I have two scientific quibbles, a comment about formatting of plots, a comment about jargon in a non-specialist journal, and a general comment about the video availability.

Science first:

1.) I think there is a lot of information contained within Figure 4 and the cursory explanation in the manuscript left me wanting a bit more. If I understand it correctly the authors attribute the variability primarily to the Si loading (%?, placement? particle size?) but there isn't any effort to quantify what was observed.

2.) Similarly there is a lot of information covered in Figure 2 that is not really explained. There is a surprising amount of color variation in (c) and (d), is this in any way correlated to the perceived performance of the device?

Formatting of plots:

Figure 4 would probably be better if presented as a violin plot. It is difficult to read when it is printed in color and even harder to read in grey scale. (also I believe the y-axis is not spelled correctly)

Jargon:

This article is filled with battery jargon, C/50, C/20, etc. Digital Discovery readership is a bit too broad for this, please consider explaining the electrochemistry specific terms to a more general readership.

Video availability:

The text describing how the batteries are made is at this point not well written enough for me to fully understand what is going on. The manuscript stated that videos would be available online but I could not find a link for them in the manuscript or the SI. Not sure what happened here, however, I suggest setting them up on YouTube and linking them on the front page of your (very nicely formatted) GitHub Repo.

All and all this is a great paper and with minor revisions it should be publishable. I do not need to re-review it.

Reviewer 3

The manuscript represents a strong demonstration of the role of automation in assembly operations. Additionally, providing the code and designs to the readers is excellent. I have included four points below to improve the usability and accessibility of AutoBASS for readers.

- In the GitHub repo, please provide software/modules dependencies and any information related to the operating system and installation. E.g., tkinter dependences, etc. This will help with setting up the environment for launching and using AutoBASS.

- I was unable to unzip the .zip files containing the data. How was the file zipped? Was the zipping approach native to a specific operating system? I was able to download and unzip the repo from GitHub without any issues but I wasn't able to unzip the specific data files. E.g., cell_data_published.pck 2.zip.001. Please provide further guidance on how to unzip or access the data files.

- Perhaps due to operating system and modules dependencies, I was unable to view the AutoBass GUI. Please provide additional guidance on launching the software. Additionally, please provide screenshots of the GUI interface in the GitHub repo as it would help readers rapidly view and understand the front-end of AutoBass - perhaps even a screen recording of using AutoBass would be great.

- I could not find the references videos in the SI nor in the repository. ("In the supplementary information we supply a series of videos showing this procedure in detail.")

REVIEWER REPORT(S):
Referee: 1

Comments to the Author
The present manuscript describe the robotic system for assembling coin-type battery cell. This system can contribute to accelerate battery test with high reproducibility compared with the human doing same experiments. However, concept itself is not unique. In addition, in the manuscript, the details of robotic system is not described. Thus, for readers, it is difficult to get deep information for experimental procedure. In the manuscript, the analysis of the obtained electrochemical data is also described. However, discussion is poor. Thus, the manuscript need to be largely revised to be accepted in peer-review journal.

Assembling process of standard lithium ion battery cell is alreadly manufacturaized.
For example, please find the following
https://www.hitachi-power-solutions.com/en/product/equipment/production-line-solution/core/automatic-assembly/index.html
https://www.hi-mecha.co.jp/en/business/products/liion/


The details of experimental setup should be provides in simillar level in following scientifc papers.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00542-019-04368-5
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666386420302861?via%3Dihub
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0378775322006954?via%3Dihub

Compared with above references, the description of the present manuscript is poor.
I think the scientific paper should provied enough information for readers to reproduce the most of the setup.


Scope and the existence of pilot production lines
Naturally there are robotic systems for the industrial production of batteries at great productivity. The ultra large-scale production of coin cells as shown in the examples by reviewer 1 have an entirely different purpose, that is production systems for consumer products. AutoBASS aims at the reliable and reproducible small batch production of coin cells for research purposes i.e. building a bridge between manual single cell making in research labs and the production systems mentioned by the reiviewer. Also, in terms of floor requirement and cost the reviewer 1 mentioned Systems and AutoBASS play in entire different leagues. Take for instance the Hitachi System:

If one conservatively assumes that every box component (window on the left bottom side) is ca. 100cm wide then this system is roughly 7 m long and 4 m wide. This is larger than most research labs in academia. AutoBASS is about 140cm long and 60 cm wide, fitting in an average large glovebox. Of course, AutoBASS does the same conceptual same thing as the production systems but on about 3% of the floorspace. We do not claim or intend to claim anywhere in the manuscript that this system is suited for industrial production scale, and we have revised the manuscript accordingly. What we intended with AutoBASS is that this system should act as a bridge from conventional manual assembly of cells to pilot line production systems. This does currently not exist.

Another feature distinguishing the Hitachi, Hi-Meca or any other industrial production system to AutoBASS is that herein we do not focus on commercial productivity but on agility and reproducibility in a research context under tight budgetary constraints. I’m certain that a system from Hitachi or Hi-Meca will produce much more cells and have much less failures but will come at probably 100x to 1000x the cost and materials needed.
We still strongly believe, and in fact this review proves this again, that to date there is no open sourced and open hardware-based system for robotic battery assembly in academic research.

With these considerations in mind we have added to the introduction the following:
The focus of AutoBASS is the proliferation of productive and reproducible coin cell manufacturing robots in small scale academic research. The intention is to build a bridge between singular mand made cells to pilot line production. AutoBASS is open source and agile enough that it provides an addition for verification and translation in an academic research context to large scale deployments i.e. its intention is to remove barriers for small batch upscaling instead of creating new ones.

Experimental procedure
We understand that, also from the other reviewers, that the exact experimental procedure could have been described in a better format. We have therefore added a new figure in which all assembly steps are shown with a photograph to aid interested readers in understanding the overall process. Due to the complexity and length of the procedure that figure is relatively convoluted, which is why we have added an extended and very detailed description of all robotic assembly steps in the supplementary information totaling over 46 photos on nine pages.
In the main text we therefore added the following text:

The following description of the lengthy assembly procedure is shown with detailed pictures in the SI containing 46 photos of all relevant movement positions including a description on why these movements are executed in that way.

The text and Figures added to the SI are as follows:

The following text contains a detailed description with photos of all steps during automatic cell assembly

Cell Construction
The AUTOBASS is specifically designed for manufacturing the test cells in the standard form of CR2032 coin cells which are designed in the dimension of 20 mm in diameter and 3.2 mm in thickness. Each cell contains two SS304 spacers of 0.5 mm thick and 15.5 mm in diameter and one conically shaped spring of 1.2 mm in height and 15.4 mm in diameter. The outer cases of the coin cell are composed of a 20 mm diameter positive case made of SS304 and a 19.8 mm diameter negative case of SS304 with an O-ring which is placed in electric contact with the spring and the spacer beneath the anode, respectively. An asymmetric cell design is implemented, in which a larger anode size (15mm in diameter) is used as the cathode (15 mm in diameter) and in between is a 16 mm diameter separator.


Figure 2: Schematic rendering of the CR2032 Cell construction.

Assembly Preparation
To accommodate the assembly procedure of the cell CR2032 construction, 7 trays, each with 64 pitches (shown in Figure 1) in different diameters according to components’ sizes were designed. All components including the pre-cut electrodes and separators need to be manually loaded into the pitches of trays accordingly, due to the identical size of the two spacers, the cathode and anode spacers are stack placed into the same pitch. Prior to starting the assembly, first the system needs to go through a series of initiating and checking progress in sequence: the two robotic arms and the linear rail need to be activated and homed, other instruments such as the syringe pump and microcontrollers will need to run connection and configuration check. This can be done automatically by following the steps guided in our graphic user interface. After that, the system is all set and ready to assemble coin cells.

Assembly procedure
The automatic assembly procedure is coordinated according to the standard procedure of manual coin cell assembly guidelines and others recommended by BIG-MAP. The assembly started with the anode case facing downwards, then come to the handling of different components in sequence, which are: first spacer placement, anode placement, first electrolyte dispensing, separator placement, second electrolyte dispensing, cathode placement, second spacer placement, spring placement, and closing with cathode case, then in the end, to the final steps as sealing and finishing up. Each step will be detailly described in the next context.

Anode case placement
The linear rail will first drive Robot A (the assembly robot) to the place next to the tray of the anode case, the vacuum gripper mounted on robot A will then reach down and grab the anode case with vacuum, with the anode case being vacuum grabbed, the robot arm zeroes all its joints and the linear rail jogs robot A to the nearby of the assembly post, the anode case goes down with the suction cup into the pitch of the assembly post and was placed on to it upon releasing of the vacuum (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Anode case being vacuum grabbed, transported, and placed onto the assembly post




Anode spacer placement
Similar to that of the anode case, the first spacer will be picked up from its tray and placed in the middle the anode case placed on the post earlier (Figure 4).


Figure 4: Anode spacer being vacuum grabbed, transported, and placed on the anode case



Anode placement + First electrolyte dispensing
The 15 mm anode sheet will be vacuum grabbed in the same way as the anode spacer, and placed onto the top of the first spacer with its copper foil side facing downwards. The robot then moves up aside, pointing the amounted camera right above the anode, takes a picture, and return to the homing position. Upon the anode placement, the first portion of electrolyte will be injected onto the anode’s active material surface. During this step, driven by a stepper motor connected underneath, a tap-like arm made of a PTFE 3D-printed hose will rotate in the direction of the assembly post, pointing the piping tip buried inside of the hose to the anode from last step. Through a computer-controlled syringe pump, 15.7 µL electrolyte will be pumped from its container through the pipeline to the anode’s surface. Upon finishing the arm rotates in the opposite direction and back to its initial position (Figure 5).




Figure 5: Anode being placed on top of the anode spacer, got photoed and dispensed with electrolyte on the surface.

Separator placement + Second electrolyte dispensing

The 16mm separators are initially held in a copper foil-wrapped tray and with its metallic parts grounded, proposing to compensate for the issue of static charging. The separator is vacuum gripped and moved above the anode with electrolyte on the surface, with the vacuum gripper moving downwards, the separator is then pressed against the anode, under the effect of surface tension and adhesion from the electrolyte, the separator is then in adhesion to the anode. As the last step, another picture is taken to show how well the separator is aligned. Upon the separator placement, the second portion of electrolyte is injected onto the separator in the same manner as the one during anode’s assembly (Figure 6).


Figure 6: Separator being placed on top of the anode, got photoed and dispensed with electrolyte on the surface.


Cathode placement
The 14 mm cathode is vacuum-grabbed on its aluminum surface and pressed against the separator wetted with electrolyte. Same to the anode and the separator, another picture is taken from the identical position for the post-analysis (Figure 7).


Figure 7: Cathode being placed on top of the electrolyte-wetted separator and got photoed.




Cathode spacer placement
A second spacer (cathode spacer) is serving as the electrical contact with the cathode, in the meanwhile contributing to increasing the mechanical tension inside of the cell, the assembly is similar to that of the first spacer, as the spacers are stack placed prior to the assembly, it will be picked up from the same pitch as the first one and placed on top of the cathode (Figure 8).


Figure 8: Cathode spacer being vacuum grabbed, transported, and placed on top of the cathode.

Spring placement
Due to the special conical shape, the 15.4 mm conical spring will be picked up using a gripper, the self-rectifying inside gripping mold on gripper A beneath the vacuum gripper (Figure 1, 4a) is therefore designed to grab the spring from its inside hole. Again, the linear rail jogs the robot to the nearby of spring tray, gripper goes low enough to place itself in the middle of the hole of the conical spring, then grab the spring by opening the gripper. The gripper again goes up and linear rail jogs Robot A to the place next to the assembly post, the spring will end sitting on top of the second spacer, providing sufficient mechanical stress between the components after sealing (Figure 9).

Figure 9: Conical spring being grabbed by gripper from its inside hole, placed on top of the cathode spacer.


Closing with cathode case
As the last component, the 20 mm cathode case will be picked up by using the vacuum gripper and transported above the rest of the components on the assembly post. Due to the larger size, the cathode case will enclose all the components in between with the anode case. The cell will then be closed as the case goes down with the suction cup (Figure 10).


Figure 10: Cathode case being vacuum grabbed and pressed against the rest component to close the cell.


Sealing
Transporting of the assembled cell from the assembly post to the crimper will be needed before sealing. Therefore, robot B picks up and flips the closed cell with gripper B to transfer it to the crimper. The crimper (MTI MSK-160E, China) is then being triggered by a microcontroller-connected relay to start the crimping procedure. The pressure is set through an analog dial to 800 kg. After the crimping tool reverts to its homing position, robot B approaches the crimper again to pick up the finished cell from the die through a magnetic gripping mold on top of its gripper (see Figure 1) finger to transfer it to the assembly post. By performing a sliding movement on top of the assembly post, the cell is dropped in the assembly post with the cathode cup facing up (Figure 11).



Figure 11: Closed cell is transported by Robot B to the die of the crimper, get crimped and then placed back onto the assembly post.

Finishing up
Upon sealing, robot A picks up the cell, then jogs to the cathode case tray and places the finished cell into the vacant position where the corresponding cathode cup which was previously used to close the cell (Figure 12).



Figure 12: Finished Cell is relocated to the cathode case tray.


We also understand that there was an error with uploading the video and have simply uploaded it to youtube.com per multiple reviewer requests at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7PnyjAUe5Q

The exact experimental procedure is, in contrast to any manual procedure, freely and openly available on github at https://github.com/Helge-Stein-Group/AutoBASS where in the code the exact procedure is given in programmatic form and the calibration contains the micrometer exact positions at which components are picked up or dropped. Additionally, under the folder /MechanicalParts one can find all .stl files if they would like to make an exact copy of the machine. We also provide the original modelling files for simpler adaption to other robots. We even provide a BOM for this purpose as part of the github repository.

The discussion of the electrochemical results is expanded but purposefully kept short to cater to a larger research community outside of battery research.

Referee: 2

Comments to the Author
I think that this is an overall great manuscript from the perspective of using robust automation of science to develop a more statistically significant overview of the reproducibility (or irreproducibility) of battery science. I have two scientific quibbles, a comment about formatting of plots, a comment about jargon in a non-specialist journal, and a general comment about the video availability.

Science first:

1.) I think there is a lot of information contained within Figure 4 and the cursory explanation in the manuscript left me wanting a bit more. If I understand it correctly the authors attribute the variability primarily to the Si loading (%?, placement? particle size?) but there isn't any effort to quantify what was observed.

We agree that the presentation of the variability could have been described better. The variability is very little and the dQ/dV plots exaggerate the variability (purposefully). Since the materials used herein are a relatively state of the art material (LiNiOx vs. Si-Graphite without addititives) there is very limited literature. We however tried to discuss the observed variability a bit more for the non-battery expert scientists and now additionally state in the manuscript:

As is partially already evident from the histograms shown in Figure 3 of the formation cycles, there is very little cell to cell variation. A method to study small deviations between cells and cycles are differential capacity curves as shown in Figure 4. During the first formation cycle, as shown in the top left of Figure 3 there is a significant differential charging variance. This would be indicative, if the peaks were shifted, of different resistances for certain intercalations, which does not seem to be the case. Instead, some peaks are significantly less pronounced or even absent for some cells. This could be indicative of some species on the surface of the electrodes (Oxides, Hydroxides, different Si-loading as shown in Figure S1) that react upon Lithium de/intercalation. During the discharge (indicated by the arrows) there are virtually no differences but for a few outlier cells. The large variance during the first charge is likely due to an inhomogeneous distribution of Si-Particles in the graphite electrode (see SI Figure 1). The cathode material and likely the resulting cathode electrolyte interphase (CEI) appear to be very homogenous as can be seen in the virtually identical differential discharge capacity curves in Figure 4. Besides 3 cells that show up in the dQ/dV plots as outliers there seems to be a bimodal distribution of dQ/dV shapes occurring in the second and third formation cycle as indicated by the dashed lines in Figure 3. These likely correspond to the two qualitative Si-loading regiments as shown in Figure S1.

2.) Similarly there is a lot of information covered in Figure 2 that is not really explained. There is a surprising amount of color variation in (c) and (d), is this in any way correlated to the perceived performance of the device?

We expanded the discussion of the figure in the text and agree that we should have expanded on this in the first place. We have in fact tried many different correlations and hoped to see any but there are none. This might be because the lighting conditions changed because the camera in that version of the holder shifted slightly and the lighting situation in the lab changed during the assembly. We do however want to invite the community to look at the dataset as this is the largest available in battery research that also contains (some) manufacturing data. The color variation, especially in d originates in the fact that the coated cathode sheets are slightly bend towards the camera and the lines visible are simply the glove box ceiling and camera being reflected i.e., the only data gatherable from this would be the angle at which the bending occurs relative to the anode bend. We thus now state in the text:

It should be noted that the color variations visible in Figure 2c) and d) are caused by the separator not being fully wetted and the reflective cathode backside mirroring the glovebox ceiling. The cathodes are all slightly curved due to the thick LNO coating causing the foil to slightly curl. It would be possible to determine the angular mismatch of the curling between anode and cathode, this is however beyond the scope of this manuscript.



Formatting of plots:

Figure 4 would probably be better if presented as a violin plot. It is difficult to read when it is printed in color and even harder to read in grey scale. (also I believe the y-axis is not spelled correctly)

We did try plotting it as a violin plot but decided against it and instead went with a transparency version of the original plot as shown below.


Jargon:

This article is filled with battery jargon, C/50, C/20, etc. Digital Discovery readership is a bit too broad for this, please consider explaining the electrochemistry specific terms to a more general readership.

We agree that the jargon might be hard to understand for scientists not from the battery field and have changed the manuscript accordingly to maximize impact i.e. we explain what C-rates are and what we understand what a OCP is.

In the text we write now:

In battery research, the current being used to charge/discharge an electrochemical cell is often expressed as a C-rate in order to normalize the charge/discharge rate in relative to its maximum capacity. A 1C rate indicates the amount of current under which a battery will be fully charged/discharged in 1 hour whereas under a C/20 rate it would be 20 hours. Therefore, for a battery with a capacity of 4.77 mAh, which is the theoretical capacity calculated from our material, 1C equates to a discharge current of 4.77 mA and C/20 would be 238.5 µA.

We find that there is no change in open circuit potential (OCP), where OCP refers to the potential between the battery terminals without any load applied. Open circuit potential depends on the battery state of charge, which increases with state of charge, from 3.75-11 hrs but that cells wetted >15 hrs exhibit a higher starting potential. All pictures and times measured during the assembly process are part of the accompanying datafile of this manuscript.


Video availability:

The text describing how the batteries are made is at this point not well written enough for me to fully understand what is going on. The manuscript stated that videos would be available online but I could not find a link for them in the manuscript or the SI. Not sure what happened here, however, I suggest setting them up on YouTube and linking them on the front page of your (very nicely formatted) GitHub Repo.

We have significantly expanded the descriptions in the SI (see reply to reviewer 1) and have uploaded a video showing the system from a camera placed outside the glovebox here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7PnyjAUe5Q


All and all this is a great paper and with minor revisions it should be publishable. I do not need to re-review it.

We thank the reviewer for the improvements and overall assessment of our manuscript.

Referee: 3

Comments to the Author
The manuscript represents a strong demonstration of the role of automation in assembly operations. Additionally, providing the code and designs to the readers is excellent. I have included four points below to improve the usability and accessibility of AutoBASS for readers.

We thank the reviewer for this favorable assessment of our manuscript and replied to the improvements below.

- In the GitHub repo, please provide software/modules dependencies and any information related to the operating system and installation. E.g., tkinter dependences, etc. This will help with setting up the environment for launching and using AutoBASS.

We ran a package export such that the github repo now has all packages listed and any user should be able to install the packages via:

conda install requirements.txt

- I was unable to unzip the .zip files containing the data. How was the file zipped? Was the zipping approach native to a specific operating system? I was able to download and unzip the repo from GitHub without any issues but I wasn't able to unzip the specific data files. E.g., cell_data_published.pck 2.zip.001. Please provide further guidance on how to unzip or access the data files.

We have tested unzipping on linux, macOS, and windows and found no errors. Perhaps the error was that only one file was downloaded. We changed the text in the repo:

Please go to the data folder of this repo. There you will find four zip files which you need to download all in the same folder and unzip 001:
1. cell_data_published.pck 2.zip.001
2. cell_data_published.pck 2.zip.002
3. cell_data_published.pck 2.zip.003
4. cell_data_published.pck 2.zip.004

Using macOS, linux or windows you can simply click the .001 file using for instance 7zip.

- Perhaps due to operating system and modules dependencies, I was unable to view the AutoBass GUI. Please provide additional guidance on launching the software. Additionally, please provide screenshots of the GUI interface in the GitHub repo as it would help readers rapidly view and understand the front-end of AutoBass - perhaps even a screen recording of using AutoBass would be great.

We wish to apologize for this inconvenience and have uploaded the requirements.txt to github and also added a operating instruction to the SI that contains many screenshots.

The software operating instructions added are as follows:

This guidance is intended to instruct users of AutoBASS on how to properly install module dependencies and start assembly cells with the help of AutoBASS GUI.

1. Installing environmental dependencies:

1.1. AutoBASS runs under python 3.7 or a later version, please make sure that you've installed the correct version of python.

1.2. Install all the module dependencies according to our "requiments.txt" file, you can also import all the necessary modules directly by using Anaconda.

2. Launching AutoBASS

2.1. Run “AutoBASS.py” to launch the GUI, you will see the start menu, to start the assembly procedure, click the “Assembly Coin Cell” button



2.2. You will be now led to the “Cell Assembly Interface” menu, noted that some buttons and input fields are now disabled because the system needs to be fired up first.



2.3. Click the “Initiate System” button and wait until connections to each instrument have been established and instruments been fired up:




2.4. Now the system should be fired up and ready, click “Config System” to customize necessary parameters (such as volume of electrolyte) before assembly starts, and click “OK” to confirm those settings:



2.5. Put in the tray numbers you want the robot to perform assembly, the robots will then perform assembly following the sequence from the first number to the last number you put, but please make sure these trays are already loaded with all the components needed.



2.6. Next, click “Prime Pump” to fully fill the pipeline connected to the pump, now the system is all set, click “Start Assembly” to run the assembly procedure:



2.7. The assembly is now running, and a progress bar will pop up to show what the status is, you can click the “Pause” or “Abort” button any time to interrupt the process but note that with the “Abort” function, the procedure will be irreversible.



2.8. After done with the assembly, you will be led back to the “Cell Assembly Interface” and ready for the next assembly.

- I could not find the references videos in the SI nor in the repository. ("In the supplementary information we supply a series of videos showing this procedure in detail.")

We have significantly expanded the SI with very detailed explanations and photos detailing every step of the process (see reply above) and made the video available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7PnyjAUe5Q

06-Oct-2022

Dear Dr Stein:

Manuscript ID: DD-COM-05-2022-000046.R1
TITLE: Robotic cell assembly to accelerate battery research

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Reviewer 1

The manuscript is well revised. The presetn version of the title, "Robotic cell assembly to accelerate battery research" is too genearl, thus should be properly modified.