Battery Research: Characterizing the Future

This e-book introduces the main analytical techniques used to characterize Li-ion battery materials. In particular, it focuses on nanoindentation, a very common method for measuring the mechanical properties of materials, and atomic force microscopy (AFM) characterization, which works by ‘touching’ the surface of materials with a mechanical probe to map their topography and properties with nanoscale resolution.The e-book explains how these techniques and their various modes work, and details how they are used for analyzing battery materials and what kind of information they can produce. It also presents case studies to illustrate how the techniques are being applied by working scientists in the laboratory. Looking to the future, it explores what new lithium based battery technologies are in the pipeline – including metal, sulfur and air-based technologies – and the specific challenges associated with their characterization.