Wednesday, 1 June 2022: 10:10
West Meeting Room 109 (Vancouver Convention Center)
Deeper understanding of the battery degradation heterogeneities, an intrinsic characteristic in batteries, including ionic transport, and chemical and electronic structures at interface and bulk of active materials and its dependence on other components in a battery is crucial for developing long-life batteries, especially for electric transportation purposes. Element specific X-ray absorption near-edge structures (XANES) spectroscopy, explores detailed information on the local chemistry and electronic states of the absorbing atom which makes it an excellent tool to understand chemical bonding, electronic structure, and surface and bulk chemistry difference in degraded batteries. XANES with nano-focused X-ray beam (STXM) and surface sensitive field-imaging X-PEEM can collect chemical imaging of high chemical sensitivity with good spatial resolutions. In this talk I will show nanoscale chemical imaging studies of heterogeneities of battery materials and their impacts and relationship with battery degradation by STXM and X-PEEM at CLS. The emphasis is imaging inhomogeneity in a commercial like electrode with preserved interface structure. The studies show that the battery degradation heterogeneity is an interplay of local environment, morphology and facet orientation of electrode active materials. Such novel characterization tools shall lead new insights on developing long life battery.