Powering today’s portable devices, batteries have propelled electronics into a transformative era of mobile energy, profoundly impacting our daily lives. Yet, the relentless quest for energy storage devices with enhanced performance poses a formidable challenge to the scientific community. This drive pushes researchers to explore novel chemistries and morphologies of electrode materials (EM), aiming to surpass current technology. The goal is to engineer electrochemical storage devices with superior energy density, enhanced power performance, and markedly prolonged stability. Understanding fundamental degradation mechanisms of EMs, and their mitigation strategies, are challenged by constraints of the liquid electrolyte environment and the complexity of electrode/electrolyte interphase formation, namely the solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) layer which forms, grows, and changes (on the electrode interface) with battery usage. Accordingly, the research community is increasingly seeking new pathways to understand and control battery degradation, including new diagnostic and characterization methods as well as mitigation strategies (e.g., electrode surface treatments, electrolyte additives and artificial SEI layers).
I will demonstrate how in our lab, we modify the surface of the EMs by either thin protection layer applied on its interface (using atomic/molecular layer deposition- M/ALD), or by surface reduction of high voltage cathode materials.
I will further show how we monitor in-operando, the degradation of the electrode/electrolyte interface using online electrochemical mass spectroscopy, demonstrating the efficacy of our coating strategy in suppressing the degradation pathway of the EMs.