Fluoride ions show promise as charge carriers in batteries but have limited cyclability. Here we show the reversible and homogeneous topochemical insertion/deinsertion and bulk diffusion of F ions within the one-dimensional tunnels of submicrometer-sized FeSb2O4 particles at room temperature. Read more »
A Closer Look at Water-Splitting’s Solar Fuel Potential
Although bismuth vanadate (BiVO4) is a theoretically attractive material for electrodes in photoelectric chemical cells (PECs) used for artificial photosynthesis, it hasn’t lived up to its potential. Researchers used a multimodal approach to gain new insight into what might be happening at the nanoscale to hold BiVO4 back. Read more »
2020 Shirley Award to Honor Miquel Salmeron
By taking surface studies from ultrahigh vacuum to near-ambient pressure, Miquel Salmeron’s work at the ALS has had deep impact on a broad range of scientific questions, revealing the chemical, electronic, and mechanical properties of surfaces and interfaces on the nanometer (and often atomic) scale. Read more »
COSMIC Probes Evolution of Single-Atom Platinum Catalyst
Researchers synthesized a single-atom platinum catalyst that outperformed, by a factor of 15, conventional platinum-based catalysts, which are used for fuel cells and automotive emissions control. Operando x-ray spectromicroscopy at the ALS’s COSMIC beamline revealed how electronic interactions affect the material’s morphology. Read more »
Battery Breakthrough Gives Boost to Electric Flight and Long-Range Electric Cars
While lithium metal extends an EV’s driving range, it also shortens the battery’s useful life due to lithium dendrites that can cause short circuits. Researchers report a new class of soft, solid electrolytes—made from both polymers and ceramics—that suppress dendrites, before they can propagate and cause the battery to fail. Read more »
Long Chains Stabilize Higher-Efficiency Solar Cells
Perovskite thin films have many attractive properties for use in photovoltaics, but their assembly into practical devices has led to trade-offs between efficiency and stability. The addition of surfactant-type molecules with hydrophobic chains helped produce perovskite solar cells that are both efficient and stable. Read more »
The Bottleneck Step of a Complex Catalytic Reaction
The rate-limiting step in catalysis involving oxygen uptake was identified through analysis of the reaction pathways and observations performed under operating conditions. The work lays the foundation for improving the efficiency of energy conversion and storage devices such as fuel cells, catalytic reactors, and batteries. Read more »
Porous Electrolyte Frameworks for All-Solid-State Batteries
With the help of microtomography at the ALS, researchers developed a method to produce a porous electrolyte framework that they used to construct a working all-solid-state battery. Such batteries potentially offer a higher energy density, longer cycle life, and better inherent safety than state-of-the-art lithium-ion batteries. Read more »
Seeing ‘Under the Hood’ in Batteries
To push battery performance, researchers want to learn how the individual ingredients of battery materials behave beneath the surface. But many techniques only scratch the surface of what’s at work inside batteries. A high-sensitivity x-ray technique is attracting a growing group of scientists because it provides a deeper, more precise dive into battery chemistry. Read more »
The Inside‐Outs of Metal Hydride Dehydrogenation: Imaging the Phase Evolution of the Li‐N‐H Hydrogen Storage System
Hydrogen absorption and release in lithium amide involves chemical and structural change. Scanning transmission x‐ray microscopy visualizes this phase evolution inside particles, showing a core‐shell architecture, with the more hydrogenated species as the shell for hydrogenation and, more surprisingly, for dehydrogenation as well. Read more »
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