Project title: In situ studies of rechargeable batteries using neutron and hard X-ray diffraction
Project description:
My project is part of the SMART Lighthouse project (Structure of Materials in Real Time), which is a large national project for enhancing the Danish research on materials, especially using neutron diffraction and scattering.
The aim of my project is to perform in situ and operando studies of batteries using hard synchrotron X‐ray radiation and neutron diffraction and scattering. The complementarity of neutrons and X‐rays will be utilised to obtain more information about the processes taking place inside a battery during operation. With neutron radiation, it is possible to penetrate large samples, e.g. batteries encased in steel containers, while being very sensitive to lithium. This means that it is possible to get information about the structural environment of lithium during operation, as well as directly obtain information about lithium occupancy, which is not easily achievable by in situ X‐ray diffraction, where the lattice parameters of the observed crystalline phase is used to estimate the lithium content. On the other hand, using synchrotron X‐ray radiation, it is possible to obtain extremely good angular resolution, which makes it possible to determine small changes in unit cell parameters and symmetry, as well as obtaining a good spatial resolution with focused synchrotron X‐ray radiation.
kvisgr@dtu.dk