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What happens at the tiny interfaces inside a battery can have a major impact on its performance, lifetime and safety.
In the OPINCHARGE Scientific Publications series, we highlight the publication “Advanced methods for characterizing battery interfaces: Towards a comprehensive understanding of interfacial evolution in modern batteries”.
The article brings together experts in advanced battery characterization to examine how modern analytical techniques can help us better understand how battery interfaces form, change and degrade during operation.
Read the publication: https://zenodo.org/records/19911150
A battery is a highly dynamic system. During charging and discharging, reactions continuously take place where the electrodes and electrolyte meet.
These reactions create extremely thin interfacial layers, including the solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) and cathode electrolyte interphase (CEI). Although only nanometres thick, these layers play a crucial role in determining how efficiently and safely a battery operates and how quickly it degrades.
Understanding exactly how these interfaces form and evolve is therefore an important step towards developing longer-lasting and better-performing batteries.
Studying battery interfaces is difficult.
Traditional ex situ methods often require researchers to open a battery and remove its components before analysing them. But once the battery is dismantled, the interface may change – meaning researchers are no longer observing exactly the same conditions that existed inside the operating battery.
This is why the publication puts particular emphasis on in situ and operando characterization – techniques that allow researchers to investigate processes inside batteries under conditions that are as close as possible to real operation.
There is no single technique capable of revealing everything happening at a battery interface.
The publication therefore explores a wide range of complementary methods, including:
X-ray spectroscopy and microscopy to investigate chemical and structural changes; electron microscopy to study interfaces at extremely small scales; NMR and Raman spectroscopy to provide information about chemical environments and reaction products; and techniques for analysing not only solid materials but also liquid electrolytes and gases produced during battery operation.
Computational approaches – including density functional theory, reactive force fields and machine learning – can then complement experimental observations and help researchers interpret these complex processes.
One of the central messages of the publication is the importance of multimodal and correlative analysis.
Instead of relying on a single measurement, researchers can combine several techniques to examine the same processes from different perspectives and across different spatial and temporal scales.
Advanced X-ray methods, for example, can provide nanoscale chemical imaging and reveal the heterogeneous structure of battery interfaces. Combining spectroscopy and imaging can help connect what happens at the surface of an electrode with processes occurring deeper inside the material.
The next generation of battery characterization will increasingly need to study interfaces in real time, under realistic operating conditions and using several complementary techniques together.
Bringing together advanced experiments, correlative analysis and computational modelling could provide a much more complete understanding of how battery interfaces evolve throughout their lifetime.
And that understanding is important for moving from simply observing battery degradation to designing materials and interfaces that can control it.
