Talk:Nine-volt battery

Internal construction of disposable cells
If it's made up of 6 tubular cells, it's alkaline. If it has a stack of 6 flat cells, it's carbon zinc (or at least the Leclanche flavor with ammonium chloride/zinc chloride as the elctrolyte, not an alkaline electrolyte). Don't know how the lithium-manganese dioxide types are made internally and I'm not about to spent $8 to cut one apart (and that would be WP:OR and inadmissable) (but probably only 3 cells). Bet the lithium-iron type are 6 cells, though. The Linden battery handbook doesn't show anyone making flat alkaline cells in the F22 size. Some anon insists that these exist but hasn't found a citation yet. There is no "British Ever Ready" company any more; in 1993 this story says British Ever Ready never made alkaline cells anyway. --Wtshymanski (talk) 18:52, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I can't be sure on the flat alkaline cells although I suspect there are, there is no reason for them not to be. As for the lithiums, they consist of three longitudinally arranged cells. It's not OR (it certainly shouldn't be) if it is visible in an actual product and can be seen as actual fact by anyone who looks. I think I have a cut up 9V lithium (spent of course) of some type in my image collection.--Lead holder (talk) 19:50, 20 April 2012 (UTC)
 * A reference to someone selling a 6LF22 would be great. --Wtshymanski (talk) 00:49, 22 April 2012 (UTC) Googling "6LF22" only turns up 20,000 hits so it wouldn't have been too difficult to find one. 212.183.128.174 (talk) 19:03, 22 April 2012 (UTC)


 * You can't have a citation that something does not exist unless that citation contains proof that the construction is impossible. That the citation author is unaware of the existence of something is not proof that it does not exist.  I am unaware of the existence of cylindrical celled zinc-carbon batteries, but I would never make the claim that they don't exist


 * In this case, the author of your reference is wrong. The centre battery in the illustration to the right is of a flat celled alkaline battery.  Zinc-carbon (and indeed zinc-chloride) batteries are made using layer cells wrapped in a wax type coating, or even these days heat shrink plastic, for that is all that is required.  Alkaline cells generate gas during discharge, which is absorbed by the chemistry, though there is a delay.  As a result, some pressure does build up which requires a more substantial container.  In virtually all alkaline constructions, that container is made from steel.  Even a quick look at the centre battery shows rectangular cells made with steel containers.  No manufacturer of zinc-carbon batteries is going to go to that unnecessary expense.


 * I have therefore reverted your edit. If you wish to continue to insist that there are no rectangular celled alkaline batteries, then please provide a citation that the construction is impossible. 212.183.140.5 (talk) 08:57, 22 April 2012 (UTC)


 * I added an image to the right. It is the bottom one.
 * I'll see if I can find a correctly labelled 6LF22 on my rounds, but these days I don't get my hands on as many batteries. Web searches produce countless datasheets of 6LF22 products but datasheets are rather sucky as references.--Lead holder (talk) 09:46, 22 April 2012 (UTC)


 * 6LR61 seems to be yet another designation for the battery. It is clearly the 'PP3' size.  Duracell Procell in the UK market that size battery as '6LR61' so it is probably not mislabelled at all [STOP PRESS: Just taken a dead one to bits, and guess what?  It's constructed from prismatic cells.  But in this case it might just be WP:OR.  109.145.22.224 (talk) 17:48, 22 April 2012 (UTC)].  Enhancing the image, it is clear that this is an alkaline battery (it says so on the top) and it is also clearly of prismatic cell construction in steel containers (as 212.183.140.5 pointed out).


 * Thus it is clear that Wtshymanski was just doing his usual disruptive editing. Oh, yes, and his precious Linden Battery Handbook is as wrong as wrong as he was. 109.145.22.224 (talk) 15:39, 22 April 2012 (UTC)


 * He's wrong, not for the first time, he's not being a dick about it. You're right, not for the first time, you're being a dick about it. Can't we just concentrate on making the article better and addressing a good issue brought up by 212.183.140.5 on the bottom of the page? --Lead holder (talk) 15:52, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
 * [ADDITION BEGINS] You edited your comment after I had replied, that is bad form.
 * PP3 appears to be a relatively unknown designation for this battery type, back home (UK) it is known, where I live now it isn't, in the US it isn't. It is an easy mistake to make assuming that the designations will remain the same everywhere in the world. This is why the List of battery sizes article consists mainly of different names and designations for each battery size.
 * As for the IEC designations 6LR61 is the designation for a 6 serial cell battery with each cell being L (Alkaline) R (Round) 61 (IEC pre 1990 designation for a specific cell size). 6LF22 similarly indicates 6 cells, each being Alkaline, "flat" (pre 1990 designation) 22 (pre 1990 designation for a specific cell size). The nomenclature is standardised and searchable by anyone and not really to be debated on this page. WP has an article on it right here.
 * As anyone can disassemble a battery is it really a NOR issue? It is certainly verifiable.[ADDITION ENDS]--Lead holder (talk) 21:38, 22 April 2012 (UTC)


 * No. Cutting open a battery is not verifiable the way Wikipedia defines verifiability. WP:V say "Verifiability on Wikipedia is the reader's ability to check cited sources that directly support the information in an article". Your battery is not a reliable source because you are not a reliable source. Yes, we all know that you aren't some evil vandal who got a Wikipedia account to deceive us all about how 9V batteries are constructed, but if we take your word for it rather than having a reliable source, how do we explain to the person who wants to put information based on his personal research into the Energy Catalyzer article that you are cool but he isn't? --Guy Macon (talk) 22:58, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

Improving the article was what I was attempting to do. It is made difficult when some well known disruptive editor continually reverts your edits for no adequate reason. It just gets frustrating, and I apologise if my frustration has spilt over into this talk page. I have noted that several other users have made similar complaints (and Wtshymanski has been blocked at least once for disruptive editing) 109.145.22.224 (talk) 16:26, 22 April 2012 (UTC)


 * In spite of what has been established here, Wtshymanski has reverted the edit yet again. 109.145.22.224 (talk) 17:20, 22 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Since the lower photo above is clearly of an alkaline battery (good find), I have added it to the article. There seems to be some idea going on here that the battery nomenclature is related to its internal construction rather than the chemistry.  Is there any evidence for this?   I do not believe it to be true.  That there seem to be suprises (ref: caption of lower image above and 109.145.22.224's 6LR61 above) suggests that it is not true. 212.183.128.174 (talk) 18:59, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Have a look at Battery nomenclature; not surprisingly, battery nomenclature in the IEC and ANSI systems give both the internal construction and the chemistry; that's kind of the point of systematic nomenclature. --Wtshymanski (talk) 19:18, 22 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Standard battery nomenclature is a great thing. In fact, standards for naming batteries are so nice that we have several of them! Where the manufacturers have decided to follow a standard (CR2032, for example) we should also do so, but where the manufacturers have decided to use a name like "9V" which does not reference a size or chemistry, we should call them what the manufacturers put on the package, and then note any "standard" battery nomenclature that exists without implying that anyone actually calls them that. --Guy Macon (talk) 19:53, 22 April 2012 (UTC)


 * WP has some nice guidelines for article titles WP:CRITERIA. I do believe this article used to be called PP3, but was changed by consensus to the current title. I'm not fussed what it is called as redirects will sort out any problems anyway.--Lead holder (talk) 21:38, 22 April 2012 (UTC)


 * So the IEC have a designation of 6LF22 for an alkaline nine volt battery made up of six (6) alkaline (L) flat (F) cells of size 22. Google shows a considerable number of sellers selling such batteries.  Surely, the IEC specification and manufacturer's designation is citation enough for the existence of such batteries?  After all, the IEC specification certainly qualifies as verifiable (if you are prepared to shell ou the necessary readies to pay for a copy). 212.183.128.178 (talk) 12:50, 23 April 2012 (UTC)


 * The IEC standard can codify any size shape and type of battery even if it would be impossible to actually make the battery/cell itself. It is also possible to take any cell and extrapolate the IEC name by simply measuring it and following the standard guidelines (not recommended, but possible). 60086-2 has some examples of common batteries in section (I think) 7. But in reality any conceivable battery type can be codified in the standard. In regard to this actual page, only 6F22 and 6LR61 are actually mentioned in the standard itself. However there are certainly 6LF22 batteries in circulation, One will come my way again sometime and I will stick it on commons.--Lead holder (talk) 15:30, 23 April 2012 (UTC)


 * I believe that you are correct in that the IEC have not allocated the designation '6LF22'. As noted, they have applied '6F22' (for the zinc-carbon or chloride) version and it would seem that this has been unofficially extrapolated into an alkaline version.  The manufacturer of the flat celled alkaline (lower picture above) has produced a battery that is both physically and electrically interchangeable with the IEC '6LR61'.   Such a manufacturer will in all probabilty designate it as a '6LR61' so that anyone searching for a battery for their transistor radio (or whatever) will find it.  Once they have bought it and fitted it, I do not suppose that they will either know or care how it was put together.  Googling '6LF22' produces numerous hits, but once you follow some of the links, what is actually on sale seems to be '6LR61' or one of the several other established designations.  Using an existing part number or nomenclature for something that is physically and electrically identical (if not necessarily constructionally identical) is common practice. 109.145.22.224 (talk) 11:09, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
 *  I bought some cheap 9 volt batteries at Costco the other day and was delighted to find that they are in type MN1604 or IEC 6LP3146.  So at least the Duracell people put the proper IEC designation on the case to show they are made of prismatic cells, not round cells.  However, I was less delighted when I found the Duracell datasheet for this version, which shows much lower capacity at high load than does the regular tubular-cell version. Now I know why they are cheap.  And made in Malaysia, of all places...and cheaper to ship them halfway round the world than to make them in my own country. Still haven't cut one open to see what the internals look like. --Wtshymanski (talk) 16:31, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

Misleading about history
This sentence is really wrong: Early transistorized radios and other equipment needed a low voltage battery, but the lowest voltage, commonly available small battery at that time was a 22.5V battery made for vacuum tube/thermionic valve hearing aids and for photo flash gun (using flash bulbs). There were various low voltage batteries available at the time, certainly 1.5V, 4.5V and 6V, and probably others. They were very common for torches as well as heater batteries for valve circuits. I will fix this. Also the 1956 Everready link is no longer saying they invented it. -- Egil (talk) 07:23, 18 April 2015 (UTC)


 * There is much misunderstanding here. The first commercially available transistor radios, required a 22.5 volt battery to power them.  This was nothing to do the availability or lack thereof of lower voltage batteries.  Early transistors had to operated very close to their VCB0 limit to get the required frequency response and this necessitated higher voltage batteries than we are used to today.  The Regency TR-1 radio, the first commercially available transistor radio, would actually burst into oscillation if the battery voltage fell below 15 volts.


 * For the curious: Unlike vacuum tubes where the anode to grid parasitic capacitance (and hence the Miller effect capacitance) is fixed by the constructional geometry, in a transistor, the collector to base capacitance is a function of the size of the depletion layer. As the reverse bias across the collector to base junction is increased, the depletion layer gets thicker and the parasitic capacitance reduces.  Even so, the TR-1 also relied heavily on neutralisation, to squeeze the necessary frequency response out of three of its four transistors.  86.145.212.143 (talk) 13:23, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

IEC designation of Lithium-Manganese 9-volt?
I tried to find an equivalent IEC 60086-like designation for the lithium-manganese(IV)-oxide 9-volt battery manufactured by Energizer and UltraLife, but so far I only find the ANSI C18.3 designation 1604LC in their datasheets. I read reference #5 and it does show X-ray images of such a battery, clearly showing the three cells stacked beside each other. The research paper doesn't give the individual cells a technical designation (it was beyond their scope), but given the x-rays, they appear to be prismatic, so they must be of the CPxxxx kind rather than CRxxxx. I attempted to measure the individual cells on the x-rays with a transparent ruler I lay on top of my phone's screen. Relative to the casing measurements provided by Energizer's datasheet, I estimated each cell to measure about 44mm diagonal by 8mm thick, so a possible IEC designation for each 3V cell inside the 1604LC battery, according to my own educated judgment, would be CP4480; consequently, the 9V Li-MnO2 battery could be designated as 3CP4480, unless someone comes up with more precise measurements. 206.248.102.36 (talk) 16:31, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Sadly, unless you've found a publication that duplicates this process, this is an example of "original research" which can't be used here. It's suggestive, and might even prompt someone to find sources - but we can't use this speculative designation till someone finds it in print. Not every cell made needs or needed to have an IEC designation, it's only useful if you are trying to make an interchangeable part. Internal components of this 9-volt battery are probably not being marketed to anyone, so the manfacturer can do what they like in terms of the internal construction. --Wtshymanski (talk) 18:54, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
 * By the way, Saft also makes a similar battery with an alternative cell configuration (three 14250- or ½AA-size cells in series), but different lithium chemistry (thionyl chloride versus manganese(IV) oxide) and thus different voltage (10.8V versus 9V), in addition to different packaging (a shrink-wrap-like black plastic instead of a metal casing), so it can't be considered a 1604-size 9V battery even though the maximum outer dimensions are very close to 1604-standard and the snap connectors are virtually identical. Saft calls the constituent cells LS14250 (if they were standardized in IEC with that same chemistry, they would be designated ER14250, but the latest version I read lists only the 3V Li-MnO2 CR14250; the only IEC-standardized Li-SOCL2 battery is the square-shaped 2EP3863) and the battery itself LS9V (3ER14250 if it were to be IEC-standardized), which is technically a misnomer due to the larger voltage. The existence of this nonstandard battery suggests me that a proper 9V Li-MnO2 could be alternatively built using IEC-standard 14250-size cells (effectively becoming 3CR14250) and, although it would yield less charge than the ANSI-standard prismatic-cell 1604LC, at least in my opinion it would provide higher performance than an alkaline 1604A/6LR61 (or even its prismatic-cell variant 6LP3146 like the one made by Duracell). 206.248.102.36 (talk) 22:12, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
 * When I suggested above the theoretical 3CP4480 designation, I had misinterpreted the designation system's dimension rules. I thought that the digits ddhh in nCPddhh referred to the physical dimensions of each of the n individual cells contained in the battery, and that for prismatic cells measuring less than 100mm, hh expressed the height in tenths of mm as is the case for round CRddhh cells. Until I actually read section A.2.2.1 of the IEC standard 60086-1, ninth edition (2000). The nomenclature system devised in October 1990 actually uses the maximum outer dimensions of the battery itself (including the flat-top terminals, but not other types of terminals), not the dimensions of its constituent cells; and the system specifies the height of "non-round batteries" in integral mm, not tenths of mm as is the case for round batteries. So, armed with the new knowledge, I am withdrawing the flawed 3CP4480 designation, and in its place I suggest 3CP3146, because the dimensions specified by the Energizer datasheet above happen to be the same dimensions of the regular alkaline variety (and coincidentally for this alkaline version, the 6LP3146 name used by Duracell appears as an example name in the IEC standard's section I just mentioned above). In contrast, the 8.4V zinc-air variant standardized by ANSI as 7004Z (obsoleted by Energizer but still made by Duracell) is somewhat shorter than the others (41.9mm vs. 46.4mm) and thus could be, in theory, described as 6PP3141 but not 6PP3146. Anyway, the new designation system as described in 60086-1 § A.2 is more useful, more straightforward than the old system since it is less concerned about the inner cells' size and more concerned about the overall geometry of the battery's outer casing/jacket. Thus, in my opinion, even if Energizer or any other 9V lithium manufacturer doesn't publish an IEC designation for its battery, it wouldn't hurt to informally call it 3CP3146, regardless of how it is actually built since all that matters is the battery's geometry/size, not the inner cells' dimensions (nor whether or not the cells themselves are standardized). However, it would be better if such battery, which is sold not only in North America but also in Europe (Energizer's Pan-European datasheet), were in the future added to the IEC standard (at least its outer dimensions and electrical characteristics, not its internal construction) under the new nomenclature system, but that's just my opinion. 74.213.71.21 (talk) 18:33, 19 February 2017 (UTC)
 * In the 2006 10th edition of the same standard, section A.2.2.1 was renamed C.2.2.1, since the whole annex A discussing nomenclature in the 2000 edition was moved to annex C in the 2006 ed. 74.213.71.21 (talk) 20:49, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

Captain obvious?
"The most common type of nine-volt battery is often called a 9-volt,..."

Well... yeah. What else would you expect a nine-volt battery to be called? A 26-volt? A 1.75843 volt?

Seems like a poorly written sentence, at best. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.95.43.253 (talk) 20:40, 7 July 2020 (UTC)


 * I'm three years late, but yeah, I agree. I'd instead word it as "The most common type of nine-volt battery, the PP3, is what is commonly understood to mean the 9-volt battery". 72.72.205.192 (talk) 07:09, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

MicroCT picture of a 9 volt battery
Today I uploaded a microCT picture of a 9 volt battery to Commons. Maybe it could be of interest for this article to show the internal structure. Best regards, Adville (talk) 22:01, 8 February 2022 (UTC)


 * I like it, but my initial feeling is that the article has more than enough images, including pictures of dissected batteries. —  void  xor  00:05, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

What happened to PP2 and PP5?
Were they ever produced? I can't find any information about them. Also, why are 9-volt batteries called E batteries? Wasn't there a standard battery called an E-cell battery? I think it's the one that was called an Aladdin battery (about as tall as an F-cell but with the thickness of a C-cell). 72.72.205.192 (talk) 07:10, 23 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Google Books has become less useful over the years, but did find an ad in a 1964 issue of "Wireless World" that mentioned the PP5 in passing. So, if I were to research this topic further, I'd look for British sources about 50 or 60 years old. They might have been out of production for a long time. All pre-IEC standardization stuff is not well documented here - old British and Japanese types would be of interest. .  --Wtshymanski (talk) 22:31, 28 September 2023 (UTC)