An operando spatially resolved study of alkaline battery discharge using a novel hyperspectral detector and X-ray tomography

Abstract

An experimental technique is described for the collection of time-resolved X-ray diffraction information from a complete commercial battery cell during discharging or charging cycles. The technique uses an 80 × 80 pixel 2D energy-discriminating detector in a pinhole camera geometry which can be used with a polychromatic X-ray source. The concept was proved in a synchrotron X-ray study of commercial alkaline Zn–MnO2 AA size cells. Importantly, no modification of the cell was required. The technique enabled spatial and temporal changes to be observed with a time resolution of 20 min (5 min of data collection with a 15 min wait between scans). Chemical changes in the cell determined from diffraction information were correlated with complementary X-ray tomography scans performed on similar cells from the same batch. The clearest results were for the spatial and temporal changes in the Zn anode. Spatially, there was a sequential transformation of Zn to ZnO in the direction from the separator towards the current collector. Temporally, it was possible to track the transformation of Zn to ZnO during the discharge and follow the corresponding changes in the cathode.

Mapping of lithium ion concentrations in 3D structures through development of in situ correlative imaging of X-ray Compton scattering-computed tomography

“…It is also extremely challenging for other characterization techniques to measure lithium concentrations. For example, X-ray diffraction (XRD) is used for studying the crystal structure and lattice spacing of materials (Connolley et al, 2020;Matras et al, 2020). Although XRD can provide structural information about crystalline materials, it is not easy to perform characterization studies on amorphous materials or materials without long-range order (Chen et al, 2024;Chen & Huang, 2023;.…”

The Spectral X-ray Imaging Data Acquisition (SpeXIDAQ) Framework

“…The main advantage of the spectral content in the images is the possibility of material identification at lab X-ray sources. Due to their construction as full-field pixellated devices, these cameras allow for capture of chemical information not only in X-ray fluorescence (XRF) applications, but also in full-field transmission imaging [ 1 , 2 ] and transmission computed tomography (CT) [ 3 , 4 , 5 ]. Even in the established application domain of XRF imaging, these hyperspectral systems provide added value through their 2D nature as opposed to the single-element energy dispersive detectors commonly used in XRF measurement setups, allowing for improvements in speed and image quality for fluorescence measurements as well [ 6 , 7 , 8 ].…”