Exploring Batteries and Other Energy Materials with Advanced X-Ray Microscopy

Batteries are an integral component of the energy transition from fossil fuels to energy sustainability, playing a critical role in the storage and accessibility of energy.

It is important to understand their impact on the performance and longevity of the devices in which they are used. Safety, service life, performance, and cost are essential to ensuring the success of battery technologies and need to be addressed every step of the way.

With a finite usable life, it is imperative that efficient and environmentally sound processes are developed to re-use the valuable metals batteries contain, thus reducing the need for raw material extraction and enabling a battery circular economy. Efficient recovery of metals from black mass, the black powder derived from crushed and shredded spent batteries, is dependent on our detailed understanding of the composition of the material.

Key Learnings:

• Multiscale correlative inspection workflows that help develop a better understanding of battery systems, increase cost-effectiveness, speed product development times, and simplify quality control.
• How XRM characterization of black mass highlights details of the chemistry and morphology of its constituents.
• Understanding the impact of charging cycles on your batteries to improve safety, reduce costs.
• Exploring impact of processes on batteries in situ to provide information on thermal management, impact of varying conditions.
• How new advanced methods of X-ray microscopy speed time to answers for energy materials research and industrial decision-making.