IEC 60086 Explained: Which Part Applies to Your Battery

IEC 60086 is the standard family that primary batteries — cells that are not designed to be recharged — are written and tested against. It reaches further into daily work than the name suggests: a capacity figure printed on a wholesale carton, the test report a customs broker asks for, the standard named in a tender, and the reason a cell from one factory fits another factory’s holder all trace back to a part of it.

What complicates the answer is that 60086 is not one document. It is published in parts, and which part answers your question depends on what you are asking about: the designation, the dimensions, the declared performance, the watch trade, or the safety of the chemistry inside the can. Buyers who treat it as a single certificate end up measuring the wrong claims against the wrong paper.

What is IEC 60086?

IEC 60086 is the International Electrotechnical Commission’s series of standards for primary cells and batteries. Its stated purpose is to make batteries from different manufacturers interchangeable according to standard form, fit and function — the same can, the same terminals, the same performance declared under the same test conditions. Without a document of that kind, an AA from one plant and an AA from another would share a name and little else.

The series is split along two axes. One is subject matter: designation and nomenclature, dimensions, terminal configurations, markings, test methods, typical performance, safety and environmental aspects. The other is chemistry, because the hazards are not the same — a primary lithium cell and an alkaline cell require different protection against different failure modes. It is the chemistry axis that decides which safety part appears on our own declarations, and it is the reason this family cannot be summarised as one test.

Which part of IEC 60086 applies to your cell?

Six parts, and the one that matters most to a purchase order is usually the one written for the chemistry being bought. The table below places the parts next to the lines we build.

What does IEC 60086-1 cover?

Part 1 is the general part, and everything else in the series refers back to it. It sets the way a cell is named — the designation system that turns chemistry, shape and size into a code — together with dimensional tolerances, terminal configuration, the marking a cell must carry, the standard test methods and the typical performance tables.

Its commercial value is interchangeability, and that is what most buyers are really asking about. The tolerances in Part 1 are what let a cell from our line sit in a holder designed around another factory’s cell of the same designation, and the marking requirements are what let you identify what has actually been delivered. Where a tender or a drawing says IEC 60086 without naming a part, this framework is usually what is meant — and a document that cites 60086-1 is pointing at this specific part rather than at the family.

What does IEC 60086-2 cover?

Part 2 carries the numbers, and buyers quote it more often than they realise. It holds the physical and electrical specification of each standardised format: the dimensions, the discharge test conditions, and the performance requirement the cell has to meet.

The commercial consequence is that a milliampere-hour figure means nothing without its test condition attached. A capacity is produced by a discharge — at a stated load, to a stated cut-off voltage, at a stated temperature — and moving any one of the three moves the result. Our own sheets follow that discipline: the LR721 is declared at 13 mAh from a 460-hour discharge at 47 kΩ to a 1.2 V cut-off at 20 ± 2 °C, while the AA alkaline line is declared between 2150 and 2600 mAh by grade. Two suppliers’ figures can be compared honestly only once you know they were measured the same way, and Part 2 is the document that describes the measuring.

IEC has since carried Part 2 forward as two documents — Part 2-1 for batteries with an aqueous electrolyte and Part 2-2 for lithium batteries, both published in 2026 — which cancel and replace the 2021 edition of Part 2. Our current declarations cite Part 2 as the 2021 edition. If your file has to name a particular edition, say so at the enquiry stage and we will confirm what the paperwork for that model carries.

What does IEC 60086-3 cover?

Part 3 is the watch-battery part. It specifies the dimensions, designation, test methods and requirements for primary batteries used in watches — the coin cells the watch trade sells under retail numbers such as 377, 364 or 362, which are trade listings rather than IEC designations.

Part 3 is carried by 23 of the 29 models we publish, and they are not all watch cells: 21 are the coin cells, and the other two are the 23A and 27A 12 V cells, which are themselves built as stacks of button cells — eight LR932 elements in the 23A, eight LR732 in the 27A — so the same part reaches their elements. The AA, AAA and 9 V lines carry Parts 1, 2 and 5 and no Part 3. The value to a buyer is dimensional consistency. A jeweller’s number tells you which cell the movement was built around; Part 3 is what keeps the millimetres behind that number the same at every factory making the size.

What does IEC 60086-4 cover?

Part 4 is the safety part for lithium primary batteries, and it is the document behind our lithium line. Parts 1 to 3 describe a cell and how it performs; Part 4 sets out the abuse conditions the cell is expected to survive and the conditions each test is run under — external short circuit, forced discharge, exposure to abnormal heat and mechanical abuse among them — together with the criteria that decide whether the cell passed. It is the reason a primary lithium cell is not simply an alkaline cell with a higher voltage on the label.

Our seven Li-MnO₂ models — CR1025, CR1220, CR2016, CR2025, CR2032, CR2450 and CR2477 — are declared against Part 4 alongside Parts 1, 2 and 3. Transport is a separate question with a separate document: UN38.3 comes from the UN Manual of Tests and Criteria rather than from the 60086 series, and it is the lithium line that answers to it.

What does IEC 60086-5 cover?

Part 5 is the safety part for cells with an aqueous electrolyte: alkaline manganese dioxide, zinc-carbon, zinc-air and silver oxide. For these chemistries the characteristic failure is leakage rather than rupture — the potassium hydroxide that leaves a white crust inside a battery compartment — so the requirements are written around preventing escape of electrolyte under normal use and under defined abuse, including forced discharge, short circuit, high-temperature storage and the behaviour of cells assembled into a multi-cell pack.

Twenty-two of our models are declared against Part 5, and they are the Zn-MnO₂ line: the alkaline button cells such as LR44, LR41, LR754, LR1130 and LR626, the 23A and 27A stacks, and the 6F22 and 6LR61 blocks. If your order is alkaline, Part 5 is the safety standard on the paperwork — and Part 4 does not apply to it, however similar the can looks next to a lithium cell of the same size.

What does IEC 60086-6 cover?

Part 6 is guidance rather than a test. It deals with the environmental aspects of primary batteries: the protocols for testing environmental performance, the symbols used to carry collection and recycling messages, and the aspects and functional units to include in a life-cycle assessment. Because it offers recommendations instead of limits, it is not a document a cell is certified against in the way Parts 4 and 5 are.

It is still worth knowing that it exists, because collection and recycling marking on a retail pack is often described informally as an IEC requirement when the binding duty is a legal one. In the European Union that duty comes from Regulation (EU) 2023/1542; Part 6 is where the technical guidance for assessing the cell behind the marking sits. The EU battery regulation notes set out the marking, warning and take-back side.

Which parts does our own paperwork cite?

The family is easier to hold onto as a table of what actually appears on documents for the models we build.

Which document answers which question — factory certificate, product test report, customs paper or the EU file — is laid out on the certification matrix. The lithium classification matters for freight as well as for paperwork, and the certificates and documents guide walks through what each paper proves.

Is IEC 60086 the same as UN38.3 or IEC 62133?

Three documents routinely end up in the same folder, and they answer three different questions.

Rechargeable chemistry sits under its own standard, and the split inside it is again by chemistry — Part 1 for nickel systems such as NiMH, Part 2 for lithium. The IEC 62133 guide covers which part applies and what a buyer should ask for; what matters here is that a primary cell does not answer to it.

How should IEC 60086 be written into a specification?

Five habits save a round of correspondence later, whichever side of the order you sit on.

• Name the part, not the family. IEC 60086-5 tells a laboratory which requirement applies. IEC 60086 on its own leaves the reader to guess whether the file wants dimensions, performance or safety.
• Name the edition where the document is edition-specific. The parts are revised, and Part 2 has been reorganised into a Part 2-1 and a Part 2-2. A capacity figure and a safety report both need the edition that was actually tested against.
• Attach the test condition to every capacity figure. Load, cut-off voltage and temperature belong beside the mAh. A pair of capacity numbers without their conditions is not a comparison.
• State the chemistry of the order. Lithium or aqueous decides whether Part 4 or Part 5 is in scope, and it decides whether transport testing applies at all.
• Ask for the document rather than the logo. A test report that names the standard, the part and the model, plus a declaration of conformity for the model being bought, is what a tender or a customs file can use.

The factory vetting checklist is the buyer-side companion to this list, and the MOQ guide explains what fixes the minimum once the model and pack are settled. First orders with us begin at 50 cartons per product line, and a programme may mix several SKUs inside one carton when the cells are ordered together with their packaging.

Where every figure here comes from

Every claim above can be traced to a named document. Where a statement is about our own cells rather than about the standard, the source is our own published data.

• Part titles, the scope of each part, and the split of Part 2 into Parts 2-1 and 2-2 — the IEC catalogue entries for the series. The standards themselves are sold, but their abstracts and scopes are public.
• The mapping of a product to a part — lithium to Part 4, aqueous electrolyte to Part 5 — the same mapping testing houses publish when they offer certification to the series, and the reason 60086-4 lines up with lithium cells and 60086-5 with the rest.
• The 29 models, the 7/22 split and the edition of each part cited — our own model data, the figures rendered on the certification matrix and on each model page.
• 13 mAh over 460 hours at 47 kΩ to a 1.2 V cut-off, and the 2150 to 2600 mAh range on the AA line — our published data for those models, on the LR721 model page and the AA battery page.
• UN38.3 as transport testing for lithium cells — section 38.3 of the UN Manual of Tests and Criteria, and the reason our alkaline line carries no report against it.
• IEC 62133 as the standard for sealed rechargeable cells, in two parts — the standard itself, covered in our own 62133 guide.
• Collection, marking and take-back duties in the European Union — Regulation (EU) 2023/1542, set out on the EU battery regulation notes.