Tracking Lithium-Ion Battery Degradation with Multimodal Tomography

Lithium-ion battery degradation during cycling is a complex phenomenon that requires seeing inside commercial battery cells. To see inside these batteries without significant modifications to the battery case or architecture requires penetrating probes. Neutrons and X-rays are both non-destructive, penetrating radiations that can probe the interior structure of objects. Neutrons have high sensitivity to lithium while X-rays have high sensitivity to higher atomic number materials. Combining these two probes together allows tracking of the electrochemical active species, lithium, and the mechanical strain and deformation during charge cycling. The NIST-NeXT system combines neutron tomography and X-ray tomography into a single simultaneous measurement to facilitate direct correlation of the 3D volumes. The instrument allows operando characterization of batteries with available potentiostats and a multichannel battery cycler. This talk will give an overview of the NIST-NeXT system, developments towards high-throughput testing of batteries, and give resolution measurements for high-speed tomography.