Sensors

Sensors — thermocouples, RTDs, strain gauges, load cells, Hall-effect current sensors, optical encoders, pressure transducers, humidity sensors, gas sensors — are the eyes of every control loop and BMS in battery production. As a hard skill it requires understanding the measurement physics, signal conditioning (amplification, filtering, linearization), calibration drift, and failure modes that masquerade as process problems. Engineers and technicians apply this when specifying the dewpoint sensor that governs a dry-room cascade, when troubleshooting a coating-weight gauge that's drifting, and when adding a cell-temperature thermistor to a pack design where every gram of mass matters.

Google Gemini

Google Gemini is Google's multimodal large-language-model assistant, capable of processing text, images, code, and structured data, and deeply integrated with Google Workspace tools such as Docs, Sheets, and Slides. As a hard skill it requires effective prompt construction for both text and multimodal inputs, understanding its integration points with Google Cloud and enterprise productivity tools, and critically evaluating outputs for factual accuracy and appropriate use. Battery engineers and scientists apply Gemini to analyze experimental images alongside text data, generate data-processing code in Google Colab, summarize lengthy technical documents, and automate repetitive reporting tasks within a Google Workspace environment.

Contact Angle Measurements

Contact angle measurement quantifies the wettability of a solid surface by placing a liquid droplet on it and measuring the angle formed at the three-phase contact line, yielding information about surface energy and hydrophilicity. As a hard skill it requires preparing clean, representative surfaces, using a goniometer or optical tensiometer correctly, and selecting the appropriate analysis method — sessile drop, advancing/receding — for the application. Battery researchers apply contact angle measurements to evaluate electrode and separator wettability by electrolyte, where poor wetting leads to incomplete pore filling and degraded rate performance.

Hard Skills

Hard Skills | Skills Training | METConn

Circular Economy

Circular economy practices in battery manufacturing close the loop on critical minerals — lithium, cobalt, nickel, manganese, graphite — by designing for disassembly, recycling, and reuse. As a hard skill it requires understanding hydrometallurgical and pyrometallurgical recovery processes, second-life cell qualification, and supply chain traceability of recovered materials. Operators apply these techniques to reduce dependence on primary mining, lower production costs, and meet emerging regulatory requirements around mineral provenance.

Drones

Drones (UAVs) in a design context encompass the mechanical, electrical, and software engineering disciplines required to specify, design, build, and certify unmanned aerial systems for commercial, industrial, and defense applications. As a hard skill it requires integrating airframe structures, propulsion systems, avionics, power distribution, and payload interfaces within regulatory constraints (FAA Part 107, DO-178C for certified systems), and validating performance through simulation and flight test. Design engineers apply drone engineering to develop custom inspection platforms, autonomous survey UAVs, and payload-delivery systems where commercial off-the-shelf drones lack the required performance, endurance, or payload capacity.

Maintenance Planning

Maintenance planning structures the preventive, predictive, and corrective work needed to keep battery production lines running at target uptime. As a hard skill it requires building maintenance schedules in a CMMS, defining task lists for line equipment (mixers, coaters, presses, formation testers), and managing spare parts inventory for long-lead items. Planners apply these techniques to coordinate planned outages around production schedules, hit the mean-time-between-failure targets that make pack delivery commitments realistic, and reduce unplanned downtime.

Electricity & Electronic Circuits

Electricity and electronic circuits — DC fundamentals, AC analysis, semiconductor behavior, analog and digital design — underpin every meaningful conversation about cells, packs, BMS hardware, and the equipment used to build them. As a hard skill it requires solid grasp of Ohm's law, Kirchhoff's laws, Thevenin/Norton equivalents, and the behavior of transistors, op-amps, and switching converters under battery-relevant loads. Engineers apply this when designing pack-level current shunts, when sizing pre-charge resistors for contactor circuits, and when analyzing why a sensor signal goes noisy under load.

Cleaning Glassware

Cleaning laboratory glassware is the foundational practice of removing chemical residues, biological contamination, and particulates from vessels, pipettes, and fittings to levels that will not interfere with subsequent experiments. As a hard skill it requires selecting the appropriate cleaning agent — detergent, acid wash, base bath, solvent rinse, or aqua regia — based on residue chemistry, executing the cleaning sequence safely, and verifying cleanliness before sensitive analyses. In battery and electrochemical R&D, residual metal ions or organic films on glassware introduce trace contamination that can shift measured potentials, poison electrolytes, and invalidate careful synthesis or characterization work.

Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)

Standard operating procedures (SOPs) are written, step-by-step instructions that define how to perform a specific laboratory task safely, reproducibly, and in compliance with regulatory or quality requirements. As a hard skill it requires writing SOPs clearly enough for a trained but unfamiliar operator to follow without ambiguity, incorporating safety precautions and equipment-specific details, and maintaining version control as procedures evolve. Battery R&D labs apply SOPs to instrument operation, sample preparation, and cell assembly, ensuring that experimental results are comparable across operators and time and that safety-critical steps — such as lithium metal handling and high-voltage cell formation — are never improvised.

Microcalorimetry

Microcalorimetry measures extremely small heat flows — nanowatts to microwatts — from slow reactions, mixing processes, binding events, or biological activity, providing thermodynamic and kinetic data inaccessible to conventional calorimetry. As a hard skill it requires understanding isothermal titration, heat-flow, or accelerating rate calorimetry modes, preparing samples free of bubbles and contaminants that generate spurious signals, and fitting data to binding or reaction models. Battery researchers apply microcalorimetry to measure parasitic heat generation rates in cells during low-rate cycling, quantify reaction enthalpies of electrolyte additives, and detect subtle self-discharge and degradation reactions invisible to standard electrochemical measurements.

Design for Manufacturing (DFM)

Design for Manufacturing (DFM) discipline shapes battery cell, module, and pack designs so they can be built reliably at scale and at acceptable cost. As a hard skill it requires evaluating tolerance stack-ups, joining-method selection, tooling impact, and assembly sequence early in the product cycle. Engineers apply DFM during cell tab configuration, module clamping strategy, and pack enclosure design to eliminate features that would slow the line or cause yield loss in production.

RECHARGE

RECHARGE is Europe’s association for advanced rechargeable batteries, representing manufacturers and the full battery industry since 1998.

Adobe Creative Suite/Cloud

Adobe Creative Cloud is the industry-standard suite of design tools — Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, After Effects, and XD — covering raster, vector, layout, motion, and UX work. In an engineering design context, it is most often used for technical illustration, documentation graphics, marketing collateral, and UI/UX assets that complement CAD and product data. Fluency across the suite lets designers move ideas from sketch to polished deliverable without bouncing through external vendors.

GitHub Copilot | Skills Training | METConn

GitHub Copilot is an AI coding companion that helps developers write, review, debug, and document code more efficiently. It integrates with popular development tools to provide intelligent suggestions and automate common programming tasks.

Reliability & Maintenance

Reliability and maintenance covers the practices that keep equipment available and performing at design intent across its lifecycle — preventive, predictive, and corrective maintenance, RCM analysis, criticality ranking, and spares strategy. Modern programs combine condition monitoring (vibration, oil, thermography), CMMS data, and analytics to shift work from reactive to planned. In capital-intensive industries, reliability is among the highest-leverage levers on both cost and safety performance.

Intellectual Property (IP)

Intellectual property covers the legal protections — patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets — that turn ideas, brands, and know-how into defensible business assets. Strong programs combine invention disclosure pipelines, prior-art searching, freedom-to-operate analysis, and disciplined record-keeping with thoughtful filing and licensing strategy. In R&D-intensive sectors, IP is often the most valuable thing a company owns and is central to both offense and defense in the market.

Pneumatic Equipment & Systems

Pneumatic equipment systems use compressed air to power drills, hoists, valves, and tools where electrical or hydraulic systems are impractical or hazardous, particularly in gassy underground environments. Technicians maintain compressors, dryers, distribution piping, and end-use tools, and diagnose performance losses from leaks, moisture, or pressure drop. Reliable compressed-air systems underpin a large share of underground mining productivity and remain a major energy cost center worth optimizing.

Digital Twinning

Digital twins create live software models of battery production equipment and the cells they produce, fed by real-time sensor data from the physical line. As a hard skill it requires sensor integration, model calibration against historical run data, and use of the twin to simulate process changes before committing them on the line. Teams use digital twins to predict electrode coating defects, optimize formation cycling parameters, and validate maintenance windows without halting production.

Chemical Synthesis

Chemical synthesis in battery R&D encompasses the preparation of new active materials, electrolyte additives, and solid electrolytes through solution-phase, solid-state, sol-gel, hydrothermal, and co-precipitation routes. As a hard skill it requires selecting and scaling synthetic procedures, executing reactions under controlled atmosphere when air-sensitive precursors are involved, and purifying and characterizing intermediates and final products. Researchers apply synthesis skills to produce novel cathode materials, lithium-salt electrolytes, and coating reagents that cannot be sourced commercially and are essential to exploring next-generation battery chemistries.

Elemental/Chemical Analysis

Elemental and chemical analysis encompasses the suite of techniques — combustion analysis, ICP, AAS, XRF, EDX, ion chromatography — used to determine the elemental or molecular composition of a sample quantitatively. As a hard skill it requires selecting the right method for the matrix and concentration range, preparing certified reference standards, and applying the technique's calibration model correctly to convert raw instrument output into accurate concentration data. Battery R&D teams apply elemental analysis to verify cathode stoichiometry, certify incoming raw materials, track impurity levels in electrolytes, and close mass balances in recycling process development.

Particle Size Distribution (PSD)

Particle size distribution (PSD) analysis measures the range and frequency of particle sizes in a powder or suspension using techniques such as laser diffraction, dynamic light scattering, sedimentation, or image analysis. As a hard skill it requires preparing representative, well-dispersed samples free of agglomerates, selecting the optical model and refractive indices correctly for laser diffraction, and interpreting D10, D50, D90, and span values in the context of the application. Battery researchers apply PSD measurement to characterize cathode and anode powders, where particle size affects tap density, electrode packing, rate capability, and slurry rheology during coating.

Density Functional Theory (DFT)

Density functional theory (DFT) is the dominant quantum-mechanical method for computing the electronic structure of atoms, molecules, and materials from first principles, used to predict crystal structures, reaction energetics, electronic properties, and phase stability. As a hard skill it requires setting up and running calculations in codes like VASP, Quantum ESPRESSO, or CP2K, selecting exchange-correlation functionals appropriate to the material class, converging k-point and plane-wave cutoff parameters, and interpreting band structures, density of states, and formation energies. Battery researchers apply DFT to screen cathode and electrolyte candidates, compute lithium migration barriers, and rationalize observed capacity and voltage data with atomistic-level understanding.

Claude

Claude is Anthropic's large-language-model assistant, designed with a strong emphasis on safety, nuance, and handling long-context tasks such as analyzing lengthy documents, codebases, and technical reports. As a hard skill it requires writing clear, context-rich prompts, taking advantage of its large context window for document-level analysis, and evaluating its responses critically for correctness and relevance. Battery researchers and engineers apply Claude to synthesize literature across multiple papers, analyze and explain complex datasets, assist with code review, and draft detailed technical specifications and proposals.

Earth Science

Earth science provides the geological, geochemical, and geophysical foundation mining professionals use to locate, characterize, and extract mineral resources. It spans plate tectonics, mineralogy, sedimentology, hydrology, and structural geology, all interpreted through field mapping, drilling, and analytical instrumentation. A solid grounding in earth science underpins every downstream decision from exploration targeting to mine closure and reclamation planning.

Basic Electrical Components

Basic electrical components — resistors, capacitors, inductors, diodes, transistors, fuses, relays — are the building blocks of every control board, sensor circuit, and instrumentation panel on a battery production line. As a hard skill it requires reading component markings and tolerances, calculating expected voltages and currents, and recognizing failure modes (burnt resistors, swollen caps) during troubleshooting. Technicians apply this knowledge daily on the line: identifying a blown fuse on a coater drive, spotting a leaking electrolytic cap on a BMS PCB, or sizing a pull-up resistor on a sensor signal line.

Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD)

Atomic layer deposition (ALD) grows ultrathin, conformal films one atomic monolayer at a time by alternating self-limiting surface reactions, enabling precise control of film thickness, composition, and uniformity on complex 3D structures. As a hard skill it requires selecting precursor chemistries and process temperatures, verifying growth per cycle with ellipsometry or X-ray reflectometry, and managing precursor handling and by-product removal in research or pilot reactors. Battery researchers apply ALD to deposit protective coatings on cathode particles and solid electrolytes, passivating surfaces that would otherwise react with liquid electrolytes and degrade cycle life.

Lockout/Tagout (LOTO)

Lockout/Tagout (LOTO) is the OSHA-mandated procedure for isolating hazardous energy before maintenance or repair — especially critical in battery manufacturing where electrical, mechanical, hydraulic, and stored chemical/electrical energy sources all exist. As a hard skill it requires reading energy-isolation diagrams, applying multiple personal locks correctly, performing zero-energy verification with appropriate test equipment, and never restoring power without team accountability. Maintenance teams apply this on every intervention into a coater drive, every cell-finishing line stoppage for changeover, and every approach to a partially-assembled pack with stored DC voltage.

Laboratory Ovens & Environmental Chambers

Laboratory ovens and environmental chambers provide controlled temperature, humidity, and atmosphere conditions for drying, curing, conditioning, and aging materials, electrodes, and battery cells. As a hard skill it requires setting and verifying temperature uniformity, understanding chamber load limits and soak time requirements, and programming multi-stage profiles for formation cycling thermal management or accelerated aging studies. Battery researchers use ovens to dry electrodes before cell assembly and environmental chambers to conduct accelerated calendar-aging experiments and evaluate cell performance across the operating temperature range.

Geology & Mineralogy

Geology and mineralogy provide the descriptive and analytical framework for identifying rocks and the minerals that host valuable elements. Skills include hand-sample identification, thin-section petrography, XRD, XRF, and SEM-EDS analysis to determine mineral assemblages, textures, and paragenesis. Accurate mineralogical characterization drives metallurgical test work, processing flowsheet selection, and downstream recovery economics.

Rhino

Rhinoceros 3D (Rhino) is a NURBS-based surface modeling tool favored for its flexibility with complex freeform geometry in industrial design, architecture, marine, and jewelry industries. As a hard skill it requires fluency in NURBS curves and surfaces, the Grasshopper visual programming environment for parametric and computational design, and interoperability with downstream rendering and CAM tools. Design engineers and industrial designers apply Rhino when designing freeform product enclosures, ergonomic components, and architectural surfaces where the geometric flexibility of NURBS outperforms the history-tree approach of parametric CAD suites.

Structured Query Language (SQL)

SQL is the universal language for relational data — battery production teams use it to query MES databases, pull cell-formation history, audit pack genealogy, and feed analytics platforms with structured data. As a hard skill it requires fluency in joins (inner, outer, anti), window functions, aggregation patterns, query plan reading, and the index-design discipline that determines whether a yield query returns in 200ms or 20 minutes. Engineers and analysts apply this when reconstructing a cell's life from manufacture to field failure, when pulling a daily yield extract for the morning standup, and when designing the schema that ties pack IDs to cell IDs to test records.

Commercial Driver's License (CDL)

A commercial driver's license (CDL) is the federally regulated credential required to operate heavy or specialized vehicles, including tractor-trailers, tankers, and many mining and construction trucks. Earning and maintaining a CDL involves classroom instruction, behind-the-wheel training, knowledge and skills testing, medical certification, and ongoing compliance with FMCSA hours-of-service and drug-and-alcohol rules. CDL drivers are a chronic constraint on industrial logistics, and the credential is a high-demand entry point into well-paying supply chain careers.

FTIR Spectroscopy

Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) measures the absorption of infrared light by molecular vibrations, producing a fingerprint spectrum that identifies functional groups and chemical bonds in a sample. As a hard skill it requires selecting the appropriate sampling accessory (ATR, transmission, diffuse reflectance), maintaining background and calibration standards, and interpreting complex spectra for mixtures and degradation products. Battery researchers apply FTIR to identify electrolyte decomposition products on electrode surfaces, monitor solid electrolyte interphase composition, and verify the chemical identity and purity of synthesized materials.

X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy (XAS)

X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) measures the energy-dependent X-ray absorption of a target element near and above its absorption edge, providing element-specific information on oxidation state, coordination environment, and local atomic structure through the XANES and EXAFS regions. As a hard skill it requires preparing samples with correct thickness and homogeneity for transmission or fluorescence detection, collecting reference compounds for edge comparison and linear-combination fitting, and analyzing EXAFS with software packages such as Athena and Artemis. Battery researchers apply XAS operando to track transition-metal oxidation-state changes in cathodes and to characterize local structure around active elements in amorphous and nanocrystalline materials.

Thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA)

Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) records the mass of a sample as a function of temperature or time under a controlled atmosphere, detecting decomposition, oxidation, moisture loss, and volatilization events from the mass-loss profile and its derivatives. As a hard skill it requires selecting the appropriate gas atmosphere, calibrating the balance and temperature sensor with certified standards, and correlating mass-loss steps with derivative curves and complementary techniques such as DSC or evolved-gas mass spectrometry. Battery researchers apply TGA to determine organic binder content in electrodes, measure residual solvent after drying, characterize cathode thermal stability, and assess carbon content in active materials.

Gnuplot

Gnuplot is a portable, command-driven graphing utility widely used in scientific computing to plot functions, data files, and script-generated figures across Linux, Mac, and Windows environments without a GUI dependency. As a hard skill it requires fluency in Gnuplot's scripting syntax, multiplot layouts, custom terminal and output formats (PNG, SVG, PDF, LaTeX), and the fit command for nonlinear least-squares regression. Battery researchers and engineers apply Gnuplot to generate reproducible plots in automated data-processing pipelines, produce consistent figure styles for technical reports, and visualize large formation or cycling datasets without opening a full data-analysis application.

Scala

Scala is the JVM-hosted functional/object-oriented language that powers Spark — the dominant distributed compute framework used by battery teams running large-scale analytics on cell-formation, end-of-line test, and fleet telemetry data. As a hard skill it requires fluency in Scala's type system (case classes, traits, implicits), the functional idioms (immutable data, higher-order functions), Spark's DataFrame and Dataset APIs, and the build and dependency tooling (sbt, Maven). Data engineers apply this when writing Spark jobs that join millions of cell-formation records with corresponding pack tests, when building streaming ingestion from Kafka into the data lake, and when refactoring Python prototypes into production-grade Spark for plant-wide deployment.

X-ray Fluorescence (XRF)

X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectrometry determines elemental composition by exciting a sample with X-rays and measuring the characteristic fluorescence energies emitted by each element, providing rapid, multi-element, largely non-destructive analysis of solids, powders, and liquids. As a hard skill it requires selecting wavelength-dispersive (WDXRF) or energy-dispersive (EDXRF) mode based on required resolution and throughput, preparing samples with consistent geometry and matrix, and applying fundamental-parameters or empirical calibrations for accurate quantitation. Battery researchers apply XRF to screen cathode powder stoichiometry, verify element ratios in synthesized materials, and perform incoming quality checks on active materials and current-collector foils without the sample digestion required by wet-chemical methods.

Electron Energy Loss Spectroscopy (EELS)

Electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS) measures the energy lost by electrons as they pass through a thin specimen in a transmission electron microscope, revealing elemental composition, oxidation state, bonding, and electronic structure at near-atomic resolution. As a hard skill it requires preparing electron-transparent specimens, acquiring spectra with high signal-to-noise, and performing background subtraction, multiple-scattering correction, and quantitative analysis using reference cross-sections. Battery researchers apply EELS to probe lithiation-state gradients, transition-metal valence changes, and interfacial chemistry in cathodes and solid electrolytes at a spatial scale no other technique can match.

Microsoft OneDrive

Microsoft OneDrive is a file hosting service operated by Microsoft. First released in August 2007, it allows registered users to store, share and sync their files

Shipfitting

Shipfitting is the fabrication and structural assembly trade that cuts, forms, and joins the steel sections making up a vessel's hull and internal compartments — a discipline increasingly intersecting with battery integration as shipyards install large energy-storage systems in new-build and retrofit projects. As a hard skill it requires reading ship structural drawings, operating cutting and forming equipment, fitting shell plates and frames to template, and welding structural joints to classification-society specification. Shipfitters apply these skills when constructing battery-room enclosures, reinforcing deck structures to carry heavy battery banks, and installing the foundation steelwork for battery racks inside hull compartments.

Cyber Security

is the protection of computer systems and networks from attacks by malicious actors that may result in unauthorized information disclosure, theft of, or damage to hardware, software, or data, as well as from the disruption or misdirection of the services they provide.

PH Meter

A pH meter measures hydrogen ion activity in a solution via a glass electrode whose potential varies with pH, providing an accurate reading of acidity or alkalinity in aqueous and near-aqueous systems. As a hard skill it requires calibrating with at least two certified buffer solutions that bracket the expected sample pH, conditioning and storing the electrode correctly, and applying temperature compensation and ionic strength corrections for accurate results. Battery researchers use pH measurement to characterize aqueous electrolyte and rinse solutions, monitor cathode precursor precipitation reactions where pH determines particle morphology and stoichiometry, and assess spent electrolyte and black mass leachate in recycling process development.

Microsoft Excel

Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet editor developed by Microsoft for Windows, macOS, Android, iOS and iPadOS. It features calculation or computation capabilities, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a macro programming language called Visual Basic for Applications (VBA)

Vacuum Pumps

Vacuum pumps — rotary vane, turbomolecular, scroll, cryogenic, and ion pumps — remove gas from a system to achieve the pressures required by electron microscopes, thin-film deposition equipment, and glove-box regeneration cycles. As a hard skill it requires selecting the pump type and staging for the target pressure range, performing routine maintenance such as oil changes, trap cleaning, and rotor inspection, and troubleshooting leaks with residual gas analyzers or helium leak detectors. Battery researchers rely on vacuum systems for SEM and TEM operation, ALD and sputter deposition, and electrolyte degassing, where inadequate vacuum allows residual gases to contaminate samples, degrade film quality, and generate background signals in analytical instruments.

Microsoft 365

Microsoft 365 is a product family of productivity software, collaboration and cloud-based services owned by Microsoft.

Structural Analysis

Structural analysis determines whether battery pack enclosures, mounting systems, and cell interconnect structures can withstand the mechanical loads — vibration, shock, crush, and thermal cycling — imposed by their operating environment without yielding, fracturing, or losing fatigue life. As a hard skill it requires setting up and solving finite-element models in tools such as ANSYS or Abaqus, interpreting stress and displacement results against material allowables, and translating automotive or aerospace load cases into analysis inputs. Engineers apply these techniques during pack structural design, regulatory crash certification (UN ECE R100, FMVSS 305), and root-cause analysis of field failures where a structural member cracked or deformed in service.

Adobe Acrobat

Adobe Acrobat is a family of application software and Web services developed by Adobe Inc

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