ANSTO's research capabilities, led by the OPAL nuclear research reactor and associated instruments provide access to users investigating areas as diverse as materials, life sciences, climate change and mining/engineering.
Lithium Conducting Materials for Lithium- battery Applications
4. Lithium Conducting Materials for Lithium-Battery Applications
Understanding the processes of lithium transfer and the changes that they cause in battery electrodes is key to elucidating the mechanisms of battery degradation. Such information is revealed using neutron-scattering experiments, enabling the development of new materials with improved cycling capacities.
Neutron-scattering tools have several unique advantages over other analyses techniques for the studying lithium-conducting materials. The first is their sensitivity to lithium atoms in the crystal structure, and the second is their high penetration, allowing in-situ experiments with real commercial products instead of specially-designed electrochemical cells that only simulate battery processes.
Recent commissioning activities on WOMBAT, the high-intensity (and speed) neutron-powder diffractometer, demonstrated that neutron-powder diffraction can provide information on the evolution of phase compositions and crystal structures of electrodes during charge/discharge cycling of a lithium battery.