What drives rechargeable battery decay?

How quickly a battery electrode decays depends on properties of individual particles in the battery – at first. Later on, the network of particles matters more.

Rechargeable lithium-ion batteries don’t last forever – after enough cycles of charging and recharging, they’ll eventually go kaput, so researchers are constantly looking for ways to squeeze a little more life out of their battery designs.

Now, researchers at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and colleagues from Purdue University, Virginia Tech, and the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility have discovered that the factors behind battery decay actually change over time. Early on, decay seems to be driven by the properties of individual electrode particles, but after several dozen charging cycles, it’s how those particles are put together that matters more.

“The fundamental building blocks are these particles that make up the battery electrode, but when you zoom out, these particles interact with each other,” said SLAC scientist Yijin Liu, a researcher at the lab’s Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource and a senior author on the new paper. Therefore, “if you want to build a better battery, you need to look at how to put the particles together.”

Read more on the SLAC website

Image: A piece of battery cathode after 10 charging cycles. A machine-learning feature detection and quantification algorithm allowed researchers to automatically single out the most severely damaged particles of interest, which are highlighted in the image.

Credit: Courtesy Yijin Liu/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

Direct observation of the ad- and desorption of guest atoms into a mesoporous host

Battery electrodes, storage devices for gases, and some catalyst materials have tiny functional pores that can accommodate atoms, ions, and molecules. How these guest atoms are absorbed into or released from the pores is crucial to understanding the porous materials’ functionality. However, usually these processes can only be observed indirectly. A team from the Helmholtz Zentrum Berlin (HZB) has employed two experimental approaches using the ASAXS instrument at the PTB X-ray beamline of the HZB BESSY II synchrotron to directly observe the adsorption process of atoms in a mesoporous model system. The work lays the foundations for new insights into these kinds of energy materials.

Most battery materials, novel catalysts, and storage materials for hydrogen have one thing in common: they have a structure comprised of tiny pores in the nanometer range. These pores provide space which can be occupied by guest atoms, ions, and molecules. As a consequence, the properties of the guest and the host can change dramatically. Understanding the processes inside the pores is crucial to develop innovative energy technologies.

Read more on the HZB website

Image: From the measurement data, the team was able to determine that the xenon atoms first accumulate on the inner walls of the pores (state 1), before they fill them up (state 2). The X-ray beam penetrates the sample from below.

Credit: © M. Künsting/HZB