Abstract
Rechargeable batteries and electrochemical supercapacitors are two of the most promising technologies to power mobile electronics, electric vehicles and large-scale grid storage. These techniques are facing some issues, i.e. cost, safety, cycle life, energy and power density, that hinder their applications, especially in transportation and stationary electrical energy storage. Molecular-level understanding of transport and storage mechanisms of electrolyte ions in electrodes and electrolyte solutions under operating electrochemical conditions is essential to design next generation materials. Small angle neutron scattering (SANS) has become an indispensable tool to provide key insights across length scales from 1 to 200 nm and kinetics on time resolution spanning from seconds to hours. This technique benefits from the adjustable contrast via deuteration of solvents or electrolytes; non-destructive due to the high penetrating power of neutrons. It also provides statistically meaningful measurements over the total volumes of illumination within complex sample environments and functional devices under varying experimental conditions. In this talk, I will highlight the applications of SANS in the characterization of electrodes and electrolytes in the past decade. The limits and future development direction of this technique for the operando characterization are also discussed.
*This research used resources at the High Flux Isotope Reactor, a DOE Office of Science User Facility operated by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. This manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle, LLC under Contract~DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The U.S. government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the US government retains a nonexclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for U.S. government purposes. DOE will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan (http://energy.gov/downloads/doe-public-access-plan).
