Operando visualisation of battery chemistry in a sodium-ion battery by <sup>23</sup>Na magnetic resonance imaging.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 32350276.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-020-15938-x and PMC identifier 7190614.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Sodium-ion batteries are a promising battery technology for their cost and sustainability. This has led to increasing interest in the development of new sodium-ion batteries and new analytical methods to non-invasively, directly visualise battery chemistry. Here we report operando <sup>1</sup>H and <sup>23</sup>Na nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and imaging experiments to observe the speciation and distribution of sodium in the electrode and electrolyte during sodiation and desodiation of hard carbon in a sodium metal cell and a sodium-ion full-cell configuration. The evolution of the hard carbon sodiation and subsequent formation and evolution of sodium dendrites, upon over-sodiation of the hard carbon, are observed and mapped by <sup>23</sup>Na nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and imaging, and their three-dimensional microstructure visualised by <sup>1</sup>H magnetic resonance imaging. We also observe, for the first time, the formation of metallic sodium species on hard carbon upon first charge (formation) in a full-cell configuration.