Visualizing Non-equilibrium Lithiation of Spinel Oxide Via in Situ Transmission Electron Microscopy

Overview

Journal Nat Commun

Specialty Biology

Date 2016 May 10

PMID 27157119

Citations 16

Authors

Kai He

Sen Zhang

Jing Li

Xiqian Yu

Qingping Meng

Yizhou Zhu

Enyuan Hu

Ke Sun

Hongseok Yun

Xiao-Qing Yang

Yimei Zhu

Hong Gan

Yifei Mo

Eric A Stach

Christopher B Murray

Dong Su

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Spinel transition metal oxides are important electrode materials for lithium-ion batteries, whose lithiation undergoes a two-step reaction, whereby intercalation and conversion occur in a sequential manner. These two reactions are known to have distinct reaction dynamics, but it is unclear how their kinetics affects the overall electrochemical response. Here we explore the lithiation of nanosized magnetite by employing a strain-sensitive, bright-field scanning transmission electron microscopy approach. This method allows direct, real-time, high-resolution visualization of how lithiation proceeds along specific reaction pathways. We find that the initial intercalation process follows a two-phase reaction sequence, whereas further lithiation leads to the coexistence of three distinct phases within single nanoparticles, which has not been previously reported to the best of our knowledge. We use phase-field theory to model and describe these non-equilibrium reaction pathways, and to directly correlate the observed phase evolution with the battery's discharge performance.

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