Operando X-ray spectroscopy elucidating battery phase transformation

A team of researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley,  Argonne National Laboratory, aBeam Technologies Inc, and University of Science and Technology of China successfully integrated our X-ray environmental holders (liquid & gas heating) into their ultra-high resolution scanning transmission soft x-ray microscope (STXM) to perform spectroscopy and chemical analysis of heterogeneous nanoparticles.

The holder system was used to perform operando spectromicroscopy of a collection of lithium iron phosphate battery nanoplatelets are heated in the environmental cell and chemical distribution is mapped. The particles show a two-phase chemical transformation when heated at 300ºC including an intermediate state of charge.

Figure on the right: Li_xFePO₄ showing chemical distribution when heated at 300 ºC. Red (FePO₄) and green (LiFePO₄).

Reference:  Shapiro et al. “An ultrahigh-resolution soft x-ray microscope for quantitative analysis of chemically heterogeneous nanomaterials.” Science Advances  (2020). Full paper