The vast of majority of battery electrode materials of
contemporary
interest are of a crystalline nature. Crystals are, by definition,
anisotropic from an atomic-structure perspective. The inherent structural
anisotropy may give rise to favored mesoscale orientations and anisotropic
properties whether the material is in a rest state or subjected to
an external stimulus. The overall perspective of this review is that
intentional manipulation of crystallographic anisotropy of electrochemically
active materials constitute an untapped parameter space in energy
storage systems and thus provide new opportunities for materials innovations
and design. To that end, we contend that crystallographically textured
electrodes, as opposed to their textureless poly crystalline or single-crystalline
analogs, are promising candidates for next-generation storage of electrical
energy in rechargeable batteries relevant to commercial practice.
This perspective is underpinned first by the fundamentalto
a first approximationuniaxial, rotation-invariant symmetry
of electrochemical cells. On this basis, we show that a crystallographically
textured electrode with the preferred orientation aligned out-of-plane
toward the counter electrode represents an optimal strategy for utilization
of the crystals’ anisotropic properties. Detailed analyses
of anisotropy of different types lead to a simple, but potentially
useful general principle that “
P
ec
//
P
c
” textures
are optimal for metal anodes, and “
P
ec
//
S
c
”
textures are optimal for insertion-type electrodes.