, and the Toyota Research Institute have made significant new discoveries about the reactivity of lithium iron phosphate, a material used in batteries for electric cars and in other rechargeable batteries.
By mining X-ray images, MIT researchers have made significant new discoveries about the reactivity of lithium iron phosphate, a material used in batteries for electric cars and in other rechargeable batteries. In each pair pictured, actual particles are on the left and the researchers’ simulations are on the right.
“Until now, we could make these beautiful X-ray movies of battery nanoparticles at work, but it was challenging to measure and understand subtle details of how they function because the movies were so information-rich,” Chueh says. “By applying image learning to theseModeling Reaction Rates “Every little pixel in there is jumping from full to empty, full to empty. And we’re mapping that whole process, using our equations to understand how that’s happening,” Bazant says.
Furthermore, the researchers showed that these differences in reaction rate were correlated with the thickness of the carbon coating on the surface of the lithium iron phosphate particles. That carbon coating is applied to lithium iron phosphate to help it conduct electricity — otherwise, the material would conduct too slowly to be useful as a battery.
at the interface between the solid particle and the carbon coating, rather than the rate of lithium-ion diffusion in the solid.The results from this study suggest that optimizing the thickness of the carbon layer on the electrode surface could help researchers to design batteries that would work more efficiently, the researchers say.