Invited Paper LS+AC+NS-ThA3
Synchrotron X-Ray Tomography to Understand Structure and Physical Transformations in Solid State Batteries

Thursday, October 24, 2019, 3:00 pm, Room A210

The increasing demand for portable electronics, stationary storage, and electric vehicles is driving innovation in high-energy density batteries. Solid electrolytes that are strong enough to impede lithium dendrite growth may enable energy dense lithium metal anodes. Currently, the power densities of all-solid state batteries is limited because of ineffective ion transport and chemical and physical decomposition at solid|solid interfaces. The nature of ionic transport at intrinsic and extrinsic interfaces is important for mitigating chemical and structural instabilities. Extrinsic interface instabilities are responsible for high interfacial resistances. In order to displace liquid electrolytes, new materials and engineering strategies need to be developed to negate these degradation pathways. New insight into the governing physics that occurs at these interfaces are critical for developing engineering strategies for the next generation of energy dense batteries [1,2]. However, buried solid|solid interfaces are notoriously difficult to observe with traditional bench-top and lab-scale experiments. In this talk I discuss opportunities for tracking phenomena and mechanisms in all solid state batteries in-situ using advanced synchrotron techniques. Synchrotron techniques that combine reciprocal and real space techniques are best equipped to track relevant phenomena with adequate spatial and temporal resolutions.