A new X-ray technique developed at Cornell offers an unprecedented look at the elaborate inner workings of batteries while they are in use – a breakthrough that is already yielding important findings for the development of next-generation energy storage.
Despite the everyday prevalence of batteries, scientists still have many questions about the chemistry happening inside them. Common techniques to study batteries help to detail the structural phases of materials or the charge state of individual ions, but fail to show the relationship of both as the battery is operating.
The new technique – operando resonant elastic X-ray scattering – was published Dec. 15 in the journal ACS Energy Letters and gives researchers a tool to study battery charge-structure dynamics at the nanoscale.
“It’s exciting because it opens up a completely new way to investigate fundamental…
X-ray technique offers first view inside active batteries
