For some time now, researchers have been investigating ways to make batteries last longer and be more powerful.
Recently added to these researchers’ toolboxes is an X-ray microscopy technique developed at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (www.lbl.gov). It gives researchers the ability to image nanoscale electrochemical reactions inside lithium-ion battery particles as they charge and discharge.
According to the researchers, the new X-ray microscopy technique enables the imaging of battery dynamics at between a few nanometers and a few hundreds of nanometers.
A unit of measurement, a nanometer is one billionth of a meter.
While this is a tremendously difficult length scale to image in a functioning battery, researchers says it extremely important because this is the scale that controls the fundamental processes involved in battery degradation and recharge time.
