AVS 61st International Symposium & Exhibition
    Energy Frontiers Focus Topic Tuesday Sessions
       Session EN+EM+NS-TuA

Invited Paper EN+EM+NS-TuA1
Spatiotemporal Investigation of Li-Air Battery under Operating Condition: Understanding the Cathodic and Anodic Electrochemical Processes and their Interdependence

Tuesday, November 11, 2014, 2:20 pm, Room 315

Session: Charge Storage Materials and Devices
Presenter: Di-Jia Liu, Argonne National Laboratory
Correspondent: Click to Email
Li-O2 battery has generated a great deal of interests due to its high theoretical energy storage capacity for vehicular application. Many studies were carried out in attempt to understand the fundamental chemical processes inside of Li-O2 battery. The reports so far have been segmented into the investigation on the individual regions of the battery, cathode, anode and separator, mostly at the post mortem state due to the limitation of the characterization methods used.

We adopted a holistic approach in studying electrochemical processes and mechanism of the Li-O2 battery using operando methods. Particularly, we introduced the microfocused synchrotron X-ray diffraction (μ-XRD) and tomographic (μ-CT) techniques for the spatiotemporal study on the phase and structural changes in Li-O2 battery. These tools offered some unique capabilities to probe battery properties under the actual discharge-charging condition. For example, the μ-XRD has a spatial resolution at the micron scale of with a complete side penetration to the battery, rendering it feasible to study battery’s composition layer-by-layer without the interruption of battery operation. In this presentation, we will discuss our recent investigation of the Li-O2 batteries under cycling condition in real time using the cells fabricated with the most representative design and materials. We were able not only to reveal individually the changes at anode, cathode and separator, but also to provide a comprehensive view between the regional chemical processes and their interdependence to the overall battery performance during the multiple discharge-charge cycles. More importantly, the finding of this study provides new insights on the catalytic process inside of Li-O2 cell and calls for new design and materials which could lead to high capacity and longer battery life.

The work performed at Argonne is supported by DOE under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357 by UChicago Argonne, LLC.