In situ measurements of stress evolution in silicon thin films during electrochemical lithiation and delithiation

By V. Sethuraman, M. Chon, M. Shimshak, Venkat Srinivasan, Pradeep R. Guduru. 2010

613 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We report in situ measurements of stress evolution in a silicon thin-film electrode during electrochemical lithiation and delithiation by using the multi-beam optical sensor (MOS) technique. Upon lithiation, due to substrate constraint, the silicon electrode initially undergoes elastic deformation, resulting in rapid rise of compressive stress. The electrode begins to deform plastically at a compressive stress of ca. −1.75 GPa; subsequent lithiation results in continued plastic strain, dissipating mechanical energy. Upon delithiation, the electrode first undergoes elastic straining in the opposite direction, leading to a tensile stress of ca. 1 GPa; subsequently, it deforms plastically during the rest of delithiation. The plastic flow stress evolves continuously with lithium concentration. Thus, mechanical energy is dissipated in plastic deformation during both lithiation and delithiation, and it can be calculated from the stress measurements; we show that it is comparable to the polarization loss. Upon current interruption, both the film stress and the electrode potential relax with similar time constants, suggesting that stress contributes significantly to the chemical potential of lithiated silicon.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Electrical and Electronic Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6747d9c3f3ad0115c7a2662c1a69d8990d6560c2

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In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

In Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Citations in the corpus

Measurement and modeling of the mechanical and electrochemical response of amorphous Si thin film electrodes during cyclic lithiation (2013, methodology): “[36] V.A. Sethuraman, M.J. Chon, M. Shimshak, V. Srinivasan and P.R. Guduru, "In Situ measurements of stress evolution in silicon thin films during electrochemical lithiation and delithiation," Journal of Power Sources, vol. 195, pp. 5062-5066, 2010.”
In Situ Measurements of Strains in Composite Battery Electrodes during Electrochemical Cycling (2014, methodology): “[5] used a substrate curvature technique to track the stress in thin film silicon electrodes during electrochemical cycling, and showed the cyclic development of compressive and tensile stresses.”
Evaluating the performance of nanostructured materials as lithium-ion battery electrodes (2013, background): “Following Li+ insertion, a core–shell structure develops consisting of crystalline Si and an amorphous LixSi shell, where an abrupt change in Li+ concentration at the core–shell interface induces a chemical strain [21]; the amorphous shell relaxes by plastic flow [18], while the crystalline core suf”