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In situ hydrodynamic spectroscopy for structure characterization of porous energy storage electrodes

Nature Materials volume 15, pages 570–575 (2016)Cite this article

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Abstract

A primary atomic-scale effect accompanying Li-ion insertion into rechargeable battery electrodes is a significant intercalation-induced change of the unit cell volume of the crystalline material. This generates a variety of secondary multiscale dimensional changes and causes a deterioration in the energy storage performance stability. Although traditional in situ height-sensing techniques (atomic force microscopy or electrochemical dilatometry) are able to sense electrode thickness changes at a nanometre scale, they are much less informative concerning intercalation-induced changes of the porous electrode structure at a mesoscopic scale. Based on a electrochemical quartz-crystal microbalance with dissipation monitoring on multiple overtone orders, herein we introduce an in situ hydrodynamic spectroscopic method for porous electrode structure characterization. This new method will enable future developments and applications in the fields of battery and supercapacitor research, especially for diagnostics of viscoelastic properties of binders for composite electrodes and probing the micromechanical stability of their internal electrode porous structure and interfaces.

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Figure 1: Hydrodynamic spectroscopic characterization of an ideally flat electrode surface and an artificial rough surface composed of rigid polymeric semi-spheres.
Figure 2: Electrochemical properties of spray-pyrolysed LiMn2O4 electrode coatings of different loading masses.
Figure 3: Sketch of the porous electrode structures for different loading masses matched to their SEM images.
Figure 4: Comparison between the EQCM-D responses of LiMn2O4 electrodes of different morphologies in air and in liquid.
Figure 5: Combined EQCM-D and CV characterization of the Li-intercalation/deintercalation process in LiMn2O4 electrodes of different morphologies.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge funding from the German-Israeli Foundation for Scientific Research and Development (GIF) via Research Grant Agreement No. 1-1237-302.5/2014. N.J. and V.P. thank E. Arzt (INM) for his continuing support and thank the Prof. Lenz Foundation. We are also grateful to B. Kasemo, P. Simon, A. Arnau, G. Ohlsson and G. Avrushchenko for critical reading of our paper and providing important feedback to authors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan 52900, Israel

    Netanel Shpigel, Mikhael D. Levi, Sergey Sigalov, Olga Girshevitz & Doron Aurbach

  2. School of Chemistry, Raymond and Beverly Sackler Faculty of Exact Sciences, Tel-Aviv University, Ramat Aviv 69978, Israel

    Leonid Daikhin

  3. Institute of Chemistry, University of Tartu, Ravila 14A, 50411 Tartu, Estonia

    Piret Pikma, Margus Marandi, Alar Jänes & Enn Lust

  4. Institute of Physics, University of Tartu, Ravila 14C, 50411 Tartu, Estonia

    Margus Marandi

  5. INM - Leibniz Institute for New Materials, 66123 Saarbrücken, Germany

    Nicolas Jäckel & Volker Presser

  6. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Saarland University, 66123 Saarbrücken, Germany

    Nicolas Jäckel & Volker Presser

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  1. Netanel Shpigel
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Contributions

M.D.L., D.A., E.L. and V.P. designed the research for the EQCM-D and AFM methods. N.S., S.S. and N.J. performed the EQCM-D work. O.G., P.P., M.M. and A.J. designed and performed supporting AFM experiments. L.D. developed hydrodynamic admittance models to fit to the experimental data. All authors contributed to discussion of the data and writing the paper.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Mikhael D. Levi or Doron Aurbach.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Shpigel, N., Levi, M., Sigalov, S. et al. In situ hydrodynamic spectroscopy for structure characterization of porous energy storage electrodes. Nature Mater 15, 570–575 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat4577

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