Publication date: 17th July 2025
The need for battery technologies with higher energy densities and improved sustainability has motivated a large body of research into new potential electrode materials for rechargeable lithium- and sodium-ion batteries. However, in many cases, characterising the lithium/sodium-ion (de)insertion mechanisms of these new materials presents significant challenges to conventional crystallographic analysis, as disordered or nano-sized phases may form, some of which may be metastable and exist only within the battery. Here, I will present our recent work detailing how pair distribution function (PDF) analysis - a total scattering technique which is sensitive to both local and long-range structure – has been applied in situ to give highly consistent data sets from which subtle changes to local structure during electrochemical cycling can be resolved. PDF data is analysed alongside complementary methods such as x-ray diffraction, solid-state NMR, x-ray absorption spectroscopy and theoretical calculations to gain insight into a range of potential new electrode materials, including disordered rock salt lithium-cathodes and hard carbon sodium-ion anodes. I will discuss the how these structural insights may aid future electrode material discovery and design.
Key words: lithium-ion batteries, sodium-ion batteries, sustainability, in situ studies, pair distribution function analysis, structure-property relationships.
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