Origin of Li charging and discharging of primary particles

Using Hummingbird Scientific liquid cell technology, Dr. William Chueh and his team at Stanford University built a transparent nano-battery in the synchrotron liquid-electrochemistry x-ray platform, taking advantage of the modularity of the tip design.

The video shows the evolution of Li composition for particles during lithiation at a rate of 2C. The hue represents the Li composition X, where red indicate X=1 and green indicate X=0. The brightness represents thickness of material. The position of each particle (outlined in white) relative to each other, and the dashed line indicates divisions. 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.

Reference: 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, “Origin and Hysteresis of Lithium Compositional Spatiodynamics Within Battery Primary Particles,” Science 353 (2016) pp. 566-571 Abstract

Movie copyright © 2016, American Association for the Advancement of Science