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The University of Cambridge has developed a new microscope
Scientists from the University of Cambridge have developed a new microscope using the imaging technique of interference scattering microscopy. The microscope can not only observe how the battery is charged and discharged over a period of hours, it can also quickly capture the processes happening inside the battery. Lithium-ion batteries are the most widely used secondary batteries, which have the advantages of high energy density, low self-discharge rate, high potential difference, and long cycle life. Lithium-ion batteries have been applied in many fields, such as mobile phones, electric vehicles, satellites, spacecraft, underwater robots, etc. However, lithium electronic batteries are not without their shortcomings, and there is still room for improvement in terms of power density, charging speed, and service life. To improve its performance, you must first understand the inner workings of lithium batteries with the help of equipment. However, this is currently only possible with expensive, complex equipment, such as electron microscopes, or extremely powerful synchrotron X-ray machines (hundreds of thousands of times more powerful than typical X-ray machines). That is to say, it is difficult to study the internal processes of lithium batteries that actually occur under real conditions. In response to this problem, scientists from the University of Cambridge have developed a new type of microscope using the imaging technology of interference scattering microscopy. The microscope can not only observe how the battery is charged and discharged over a period of hours, it can also quickly capture the processes happening inside the battery. The tool enables simultaneous measurement and imaging of tiny objects by analyzing the interaction of light beams with scattered light. Based on this, the research team was able to image individual particles inside the lithium cobalt oxide electrode in real time and revealed some interesting behaviors. For example, during the charging and discharging process, the grain boundary of the phase transition of lithium ions in and out (this has a lot to do with the charging rate of the device). In addition, the researchers found that lithium-ion batteries have different speed limits, depending on whether it is being charged or discharged. For example, during charging, the rate depends on the speed at which lithium ions pass through the active material particles; during discharge, it depends on the speed at which the ions enter at the edges. By observing these mechanisms and manipulating the associated processes, the performance of the battery has been significantly improved. Overall, this novel and low-cost microscopy technique uncovers the microscopic work of lithium ions. In the future, it is hoped that the research results will help the research and development of intelligent electric vehicles and power batteries. A related paper, 'Operational Optical Tracing of Single-Gate Ion Dynamics in Batteries,' has been published in the journal Nature.
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