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5.20.24
A Columbia Engineering study reveals how nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy can enhance lithium metal battery design by providing detailed insights into anode surface structures. Credit: SciTechDaily.com
Columbia Engineers use nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy to examine lithium metal batteries through a new lens — their findings may help them design new electrolytes and anode surfaces for high-performance batteries.
A team from Columbia Engineering details how nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy techniques can be leveraged to design the anode surface in lithium metal batteries in a new paper published today (May 20) in the journal Joule. This research offers fresh data and interpretations on how these methods provide a unique perspective on the structure of these surfaces, beneficial to the battery research community.
“We believe that, armed with all the data we’ve pulled together, we can help accelerate the design of lithium metal batteries and help make them safe for consumers, which folks have been trying to do for more than four decades,” said the team’s leader Lauren Marbella, associate professor of chemical engineering.
The Promise of Lithium Metal Batteries
Batteries that use a lithium metal anode instead of a graphite anode, like the ones used in our cell phones and electric vehicles, will enable more affordable and versatile electrified modes of transportation, including semi-trucks and small aircraft. For example, the price of electric vehicle batteries would decrease while simultaneously offering a longer range (from 400 km to >600 km).
Challenges in Commercialization
However, commercializing lithium metal batteries is still far off in the future. Lithium metal is one of the most reactive elements on the periodic table and readily develops a passivation layer that impacts the structure of the anode itself during normal battery use. This passivation layer is like the layer that develops when silverware or jewelry begins to tarnish, but because lithium is so reactive, the lithium metal anode in a battery will begin to “tarnish” as soon as it touches the electrolyte.
The chemistry of the passivation layer impacts how lithium ions move during battery charging/discharging, ultimately impacting whether or not metal filaments that lead to poor battery performance grow inside of the system. Up to now, measuring the chemical composition of the passivation layer, known by the battery community as the solid electrolyte interphase (SEI), while simultaneously capturing information on how lithium ions located in that layer are moving around has been next to impossible.
Marbella noted, “If we had this information, we could start to draw connections to specific SEI structures and properties that lead to high-performance batteries.”
Insights From the New Research
The Joule study distills recent research, much of which the Marbella group has led or contributed to, to present a case to leverage nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy methods to connect the structure of the passivation layer on lithium to its actual function in the battery.
NMR enables researchers to directly probe how fast lithium ions move at the interface between the lithium metal anode and its passivation layer, while also providing a readout of the chemical compounds that are present on that surface. While other characterization methods, like electron microscopy, may provide striking images of the SEI layer on the surface of lithium metal, they cannot pinpoint the exact chemical composition of disordered species, nor can they “see” ion transport. Other techniques that can probe lithium transport across the interface, like electrochemical analyses, do not provide chemical information.
Examining the data collected in Marbella’s laboratory over the past six years, the team has found that NMR can uniquely sense changes in the structure of compounds in the SEI on lithium metal, which is key to explaining some of its more elusive structure-property relationships. The researchers believe that combining multiple techniques, like NMR, other spectroscopies, microscopy, computer simulations, and electrochemical methods, will be necessary to develop and advance the development of lithium metal batteries.
New Insights Through NMR Methods
When researchers expose lithium metal to different electrolytes, they often observe different performance metrics. Marbella’s NMR experiment shows that these changes in performance arise because different electrolyte compositions create distinct SEI compositions and deliver lithium ions to the anode surface at different rates. Specifically, when lithium metal battery performance improves, the rate of lithium exchange with the surface increases. They can now also see how the passivation layer should be arranged. To achieve the best performance, different chemical compounds must be layered on top of one another in the SEI, rather than randomly distributed.
The exchange experiments demonstrated in the new study can be used by materials scientists to help screen electrolyte formulations for high-performance lithium metal batteries as well as identify the surface compounds in the SEI that are required for high performance. Marbella adds that NMR is one of the only techniques — if not the only — that can probe the local structural changes of compounds in the SEI to address how ionically insulating materials may enable fast lithium-ion transport in the SEI.
“Once we know what structural changes are occurring — for instance, are things like lithium fluoride becoming amorphous, defected, nano-sized — then we can intentionally engineer these in and design lithium metal batteries that meet the performance metrics required for commercialization. The NMR experiment is one of the few that can accomplish this task and give us the very information essential to pushing anode surface design forward.”
Future Directions
Looking ahead, Marbella’s group continues to combine NMR with electrochemistry to deepen their understanding of SEI composition and properties across different electrolytes for lithium metal batteries. They are also developing methods to pinpoint the role of individual chemical components in facilitating lithium-ion transport through the SEI.
See the full article here .
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The Columbia University Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science is the engineering and applied science school of Columbia University. It was founded as the School of Mines in 1863 and then the School of Mines, Engineering and Chemistry before becoming the School of Engineering and Applied Science. On October 1, 1997, the school was renamed in honor of Chinese businessman Z.Y. Fu, who had donated $26 million to the school.
The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science maintains a close research tie with other institutions including National Aeronautics and Space Administration, IBM, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and The Earth Institute. Patents owned by the school generate over $100 million annually for the university. Faculty and alumni are responsible for technological achievements including the developments of FM radio and the maser.
The School’s applied mathematics, biomedical engineering, computer science and the financial engineering program in operations research are very famous and ranked high. The current faculty include members of the National Academy of Engineering and Nobel laureats. In all, the faculty and alumni of Columbia Engineering have won a number of Nobel Prizes in physics, chemistry, medicine, and economics.
The school consists of approximately 300 undergraduates in each graduating class and maintains close links with its undergraduate liberal arts sister school Columbia College which shares housing with SEAS students.
Original charter of 1754
Included in the original charter for Columbia College was the direction to teach “the arts of Number and Measuring, of Surveying and Navigation […] the knowledge of […] various kinds of Meteors, Stones, Mines and Minerals, Plants and Animals, and everything useful for the Comfort, the Convenience and Elegance of Life.” Engineering has always been a part of Columbia, even before the establishment of any separate school of engineering.
An early and influential graduate from the school was John Stevens, Class of 1768. Instrumental in the establishment of U.S. patent law. Stevens procured many patents in early steamboat technology; operated the first steam ferry between New York and New Jersey; received the first railroad charter in the U.S.; built a pioneer locomotive; and amassed a fortune, which allowed his sons to found the Stevens Institute of Technology.
When Columbia University first resided on Wall Street, engineering did not have a school under the Columbia umbrella. After Columbia outgrew its space on Wall Street, it relocated to what is now Midtown Manhattan in 1857. Then President Barnard and the Trustees of the University, with the urging of Professor Thomas Egleston and General Vinton, approved the School of Mines in 1863. The intention was to establish a School of Mines and Metallurgy with a three-year program open to professionally motivated students with or without prior undergraduate training. It was officially founded in 1864 under the leadership of its first dean, Columbia professor Charles F. Chandler, and specialized in mining and mineralogical engineering. An example of work from a student at the School of Mines was William Barclay Parsons, Class of 1882. He was an engineer on the Chinese railway and the Cape Cod and Panama Canals. Most importantly he worked for New York, as a chief engineer of the city’s first subway system, the Interborough Rapid Transit Company. Opened in 1904, the subway’s electric cars took passengers from City Hall to Brooklyn, the Bronx, and the newly renamed and relocated Columbia University in Morningside Heights, its present location on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
Columbia University was founded in 1754 as King’s College by royal charter of King George II of England. It is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York and the fifth oldest in the United States.
University Mission Statement
Columbia University is one of the world’s most important centers of research and at the same time a distinctive and distinguished learning environment for undergraduates and graduate students in many scholarly and professional fields. The University recognizes the importance of its location in New York City and seeks to link its research and teaching to the vast resources of a great metropolis. It seeks to attract a diverse and international faculty and student body, to support research and teaching on global issues, and to create academic relationships with many countries and regions. It expects all areas of the University to advance knowledge and learning at the highest level and to convey the products of its efforts to the world.
Columbia University is a private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhattan Columbia is the oldest institution of higher education in New York and the fifth-oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. It is one of nine colonial colleges founded prior to the Declaration of Independence, seven of which belong to the Ivy League. Columbia is ranked among the top universities in the world by major education publications.
Columbia was established as King’s College by royal charter from King George II of Great Britain in reaction to the founding of Princeton College. It was renamed Columbia College in 1784 following the American Revolution, and in 1787 was placed under a private board of trustees headed by former students Alexander Hamilton and John Jay. In 1896, the campus was moved to its current location in Morningside Heights and renamed Columbia University.
Columbia scientists and scholars have played an important role in scientific breakthroughs including brain-computer interface; the laser and maser; nuclear magnetic resonance; the first nuclear pile; the first nuclear fission reaction in the Americas; the first evidence for plate tectonics and continental drift; and much of the initial research and planning for the Manhattan Project during World War II. Columbia is organized into twenty schools, including four undergraduate schools and 15 graduate schools. The university’s research efforts include the Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and accelerator laboratories with major technology firms such as IBM. Columbia is a founding member of the Association of American Universities and was the first school in the United States to grant the M.D. degree. With over 14 million volumes, Columbia University Library is the third largest private research library in the United States.
The university’s endowment stands among the largest of any academic institution. Columbia’s alumni, faculty, and staff have included: Founding Fathers of the United States—among them a co-author of the United States Constitution and a co-author of the Declaration of Independence; U.S. presidents; foreign heads of state; justices of the United States Supreme Court; Nobel laureates; Fields Medalists; many members of National Academy of Sciences; living billionaires; Olympic medalists; Academy Award winners; and Pulitzer Prize recipients.
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