Recent Progress in Cryogenic Electron Microscopy and Spectroscopy for Energy Materials

The applications of cooling holders into energy materials started from the very beginning of the commercialization of side entry holders. Its primary applications were focused on minimizing electron beam induced damage in beam sensitive materials. These materials include for example reactive materials for energy storage and conversion (lithium, sodium metal anodes, lithiated graphite and silicon, etc.), soft materials for membrane technologies, interphase materials after wet-electrochemical cycling, catalysts that are extremely small (<3-5nm), or those containing ligands and molecules. A more profound application of Cryo-EM perhaps is the enabling of tomographic S/TEM imaging, which requires an extended acquisition time, of beam sensitive materials. The biggest challenge in cryo-EM experiments, particular for high resolution imaging and chemical analysis, lies in the limited stability, which is affected by multiple factors, such as the temperature variation on the specimen tip, the mechanical instability induced by the heavy liquid dewar, the bubbling and the constant evaporation of liquid nitrogen/helium. In this talk, I will discuss a few recent endevours to overcome these barriers, using the energy storage materials studies as the example.