Operando liquid-electrochemical microscopy reveals origin of Li charging and discharging of battery primary particles

LixFePO4 battery material particles were charged and discharged in-situ while recording the special charge state using STXM (Scanning Transmission X-ray Microscopy) at Lawrence Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source. This data showed that spatial heterogeneities in reaction rates account for domains with the charging process significantly less uniform than the discharging process. These results highlight the crucial role of surface reaction rate for lithiation, observing these inconsistencies of ion insertion have implications for electrode engineering and battery management for future generation battery technology.

Figure on the right: LixFePO4 battery material particles are shown here charging (red to green) and discharging (green to red) in-situ in the X-ray liquid-electrochemical cell. The animation shows regions of faster and slower charge.

Reference:  “Origin and hysteresis of lithium compositional spatiodynamics within battery primary particles”, J. Lim,Y. Li, D. H. Alsem, H. So, S. C. Lee, P. Bai, D.A. Cogswell, X. Liu, N. Jin, Y. Yu, N. J. Salmon, D. A. Shapiro, M. Z. Bazant, T.Tyliszczak, W. C. Chueh, Science 05 Aug 2016  Abstract