Panasonic Corporation

Yutaka Wakai

Tomofumi Yanagi

Hideaki Fujita

Yukio Koike

Kaoru Okinaga

A method for forming an electrode plate for a battery includes the steps of (a) forming mixture layers on a current collector, lateral end surfaces of the mixture layers forming a continuous plane with at least one lateral end surface of the current collector; and (b) forming a porous film on the mixture layers. The step (b) includes the steps of: (b1) placing an electrode plate including the current collector and the mixture layers on a gravure roll having a cylindrical part and a truncated cone part provided continuously on an end surface of the cylindrical part to have an outwardly increasing inside diameter, the location of the end surface of the truncated cone part near the cylindrical part corresponding to the location of the continuous plane; and (b2) after the step (b1), abutting the gravure roll against the moving electrode plate while rotating the gravure roll in the opposite direction to the direction of travel of the electrode plate, thereby continuously applying a coating fluid serving as a precursor of the porous film to the electrode plate to cover longitudinal surfaces of the mixture layers and the continuous plane.

Electrode plate for battery and method and apparatus for forming the same

A gravure coating apparatus is provided for forming a stripe-shaped coating film by means of a gravure roll having a groove between plate cylinders. The apparatus has a scraping member having: side edges each of which contacts an edge surface of one of the plate cylinders so as to be approximately aligned along the radial direction of the gravure roll and scrapes a coating solution on the edge surface; a groove-like passage for discharging the coating solution, the groove-like passage being formed in a generally central portion of the inner peripheral surface along the bottom surface of the groove so as to be aligned along the rotation direction of the gravure roll; and a tapered surface which guides the coating solution from the edges to the groove-like passage. The scraping member is disposed in the groove, whereby the coating film formed by the plate cylinders is made uniform over the entire surface using a simple configuration.

Gravure coating apparatus

A system for controlling the coating width of an electrode plate, The system includes: a coating device which ejects a paste at a predetermined width from each of a plurality of slit nozzles toward a fed core substrate to form a coating layer on the surface of the core substrate; a gap controlling device which controls the gap between the slit nozzles of the coating device and the core substrate; a coating width measuring device which measures the width of the coating layer on the surface of the core substrate; and a controlling unit which controls the gap controlling device based on the results obtained by comparing the measured coating width with a predetermined coating width. In this system, the stripe-shaped coating layer is formed without using a masking tape, and the width of the coating layer is controlled with high accuracy.

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Aichi, Japan

Yutaka Wakai