The Long Duration Experiment (LDE) Facility on Beamline I11 at Diamond Light Source is the first of its kind, allowing in situ synchrotron X-ray powder diffraction (SXPD) data to be collected on a weekly basis for extended periods of time (a few months up to a few years). The facility is capable of housing multiple experiments simultaneously, and even though data are only collected at weekly intervals the experiments remain in place and all sample environments (high/low temperature, humidity, electrochemical cycling) are maintained throughout the duration of the experiment.

  The increasing demand for large-scale energy storage (e.g. electric vehicles) means that new materials, with much higher Li+ storage capabilities and longer lifetimes than are currently available are required to meet this demand. Many promising candidates for such materials are known but before these can become commercially available their chemical/structural stability and electrochemical cycling performance need to be well understood. In-situ powder diffraction has proven to be an extremely useful technique for just this, providing an insight into the complex chemical process that take place during charge/discharge cycling. Standard in situ experiments using existing facilities are, however, often limited to short periods of time, from a few hours up to a few (2-3) days, and therefore, only allow the first few cycles (often at accelerated charging rates) of the material to be observed. The result is that the material characteristics may be well understood for the first cycle but little is known about the long term processes that ultimately lead to failure of the cell over longer timescales. 

With a specially designed coin cell holder (Figure 1 inset) and dedicated multi-channel Arbin battery cyclers it is an ideal facility for the long term study of both existing and novel battery materials. This setup allows data to be collected over many hundreds of cycles at slower, more realistic, rates without the need for accelerated cycling therefore better simulating battery use under real-life conditions. To achieve this, a new in situ cell was developed through the modification of a standard CR2032 coin cell which allows for the transmission of X-rays while retaining the integrity and impermeability of the stainless steel case and therefore allowing the cell to perform well for long periods of time.

Details of the facility and the modified coin cells will be presented along with preliminary results of the first long term battery studies, of a selection of Li-based electrodes (commercial and novel materials), to demonstrate the capabilities of this facility and the quality of the data produced.