Correlating Structure and Function of Battery Interphases at Atomic Resolution Using Cryoelectron Microscopy

By Yuzhang Li, W. Huang, Yanbin Li, Allen Pei, D. T. Boyle, Yi Cui. Joule, 2018

373 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Summary Battery decay and failure depend strongly on the solid electrolyte interphase (SEI), a surface corrosion layer that forms on the surface of all battery electrodes. Recently, we revealed the atomic structure of these reactive and sensitive battery materials and their SEIs using cryoelectron microscopy (cryo-EM). However, the SEI nanostructure's fundamental role and effect on battery performance remain unclear. Here, we use cryo-EM to discover the function of two distinct SEI nanostructures (i.e., mosaic and multilayer) and correlate their stark effects with Li metal battery performance. We identify fluctuations in crystalline grain distribution within the SEI as the critical feature differentiating the mosaic SEI from the multilayer SEI, resulting in their distinct electrochemical stripping mechanisms. Whereas localized Li dissolution occurs quickly through regions of high crystallinity in the mosaic SEI, uniform Li stripping is observed for the more ordered multilayer SEIs, which reduces Li loss during battery cycling by a factor of three. This dramatic performance enhancement from a subtle change in SEI nanostructure highlights the importance of cryo-EM studies in revealing crucial failure modes of high-energy batteries at the nanoscale.

Subfields: Electrical and Electronic Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1b57b55b8fe98734686d6a6be74c43ec630de9fc

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In Electrical and Electronic Engineering

1. Qiang Zhang
2. Xue‐Qiang Zhang
3. Chong Yan
4. Bo‐Quan Li
5. Jiaqi Huang
6. Zaiping Guo
7. Wenchao Zhang
8. Peng Chen

Citations in the corpus

• A compact inorganic layer for robust anode protection in lithium‐sulfur batteries (2020, background): “Moreover, dendritic Li forms and cracks the fragile SEI during Li plating.(17,18) The rupture of SEI aggravates the side reactions between Li and electrolyte.”
• Cryogenic Electron Microscopy for Characterizing and Diagnosing Batteries (2018, methodology): “Stripped Li metal cryo cryo transfer holder cryo-TEM correlate the SEI structure with stripping process Li et al.(32)”
• Unveiling the Stable Nature of the Solid Electrolyte Interphase between Lithium Metal and LiPON via Cryogenic Electron Microscopy (2020, result): “They hypothesize that the enhanced electrochemical performance using fluorinated electrolyte is attributed to the formation of a multilayer SEI structure, in contrast to the mosaic SEI structure formed with standard carbonate-based electrolyte, which stressed the competing impact of SEI nanostructur”
• Approaching high-performance potassium-ion batteries via advanced design strategies and engineering (2019, background): “Thanks to the in situ techniques developed recently, such as in situ Raman spectroscopy, cryogenic electron microscopy (95), and Fourier transform infrared microscopy, it is now possible to understand not only the chemical composition of the SEI film but also the distribution of each element on the ”