This webinar will focus on advanced, in situ environmental transmission electron microscopy and its integration with other peripheral capabilities for probing into the structural and chemical evolution of electrode materials for rechargeable batteries. Our experts will be joined by Dr. Chongmin Wang, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), who will illustrate how the insights gained from these advanced microscopy diagnoses can be used to guide an optimized design and discovery of electrode materials for better batteries.

Attend this webinar to learn how to:

Capture the frontier of advanced, in situ electron microscopy and its applications for energy storage materials
Gain insight on approaches that can be used to implant a science question on the available microscopy platform
Stimulate general thinking on enhancing and developing new microscopy capabilities to solve challenging science questions

Presentation abstract:

We have witnessed tremendous progress on the development of aberration corrected transmission electron microscopy and scanning transmission electron microscopy. As a result of this development, atomic scale imaging and spectroscopy of materials, under high vacuum and static condition, appears to be a routine practice. The questions now come to how we extend the microscopy and spectroscopy methodologies to analyze materials at or near realistic condition, which is broadly termed as in-situ and operando electron microscopy. In a general sense, in-situ and operando electron microscopy enable direct observation of process under dynamic operating condition of a device, representatively such as: real time observation of structural and chemical evolution of rechargeable batteries under battery operating condition; finding the active sites of catalyst; monitoring of mass transport during oxidation and reduction; observing nucleation and growth process in a liquid; visualizing defect generation and interaction during deformation; and capturing the response of materials to external stimuluses. In this presentation, I will focus on recent progress on using ex-situ, in-situ, operando and cryo-scanning transmission electron microscopy for probing into the structural and chemical evolution of electrode materials for lithium ion batteries, representatively such as Li and Si anode. I will highlight several recent key observations, which even appear to be well documented, while essentially are poorly understood, therefore limiting the advances of both cathode and anode for better batteries. It would be expected that this presentation can stimulate new ideas as how to attack the bottlenecks for advancing electrode materials design for better batteries. In perspective, challenges and opportunities for developing in-situ electron microscopy for probing both functional and structural materials will also be discussed.

Presented by Thermo Fisher Scientific