The success of new liquid and solid-state battery chemistries with improved transport increasingly depends on understanding dynamic local structures at interfaces and in the bulk at relevant length and time scales. This talk will address the lack of direct experimental insight on these fronts and showcase advanced X-ray scattering methods for structural characterization in energy storage materials. First, a strong dependence on applied potential is revealed in the structure of the electric double layer (EDL) formed at liquid/solid interfaces from operando resonant and non-resonant X-ray reflectivity measurements. On the second front, I will discuss a novel approach to understanding atomic-scale ion migration mechanisms in crystalline ion conductors using ultrafast X-ray total scattering. These approaches bring direct insight into the potential-dependent structural motifs adopted at liquid electrolytes/solid electrode interfaces and deviations in local order in crystalline electrolytes.
Bio: Dr. Samuel Marks is a postdoctoral scholar with Prof. Michael Toney at the University of Colorado - Boulder, where he studies dynamic structural phenomena at solid/liquid interfaces and in the local order of crystalline ion conductors by developing new methodologies based on ultrafast and coherent X-ray scattering. He obtained his Ph.D. in 2022 from the University of Wisconsin - Madison, where he worked with Prof. Paul Evans to study crystallization mechanisms in amorphous transition metal oxides using in-situ X-ray scattering. He has also studied dynamic defect structures in strongly correlated materials using combined optical, electronic, and structural probes as a DOE graduate fellow.