Doctorate Programme on Emerging Battery Storage Technology INspiring Young scientists
European Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions COFUND PhD Programme
Topic 01-01 : Ultra-fast operando characterizations for high rate energy storage materials
The first task of this project will be to continue developing operando cells for “in-house” use and large-scale facilities. Indeed, access to synchrotron is not always easy and being able to run high quality and extremely fast measurements “at home” is essential. To do so, the LRCS recently purchased a new custom-made high-flux diffractometer (rotating anode) allowing high quality data collection within a minute. We believe this development is of most importance in order to understand the mechanisms involved at very high rate but also when the materials is “out of equilibrium”. Another important point will be to design a dedicated heating setup in order to operate the cell at various temperatures.
This will open doors to two main objectives:
1) Synthesis of new high rate Li-based layered oxide materials or Na-based polyanionic electrode materials and fast Characterization of “out of equilibrium” processes. Using the newly developed cells, structural investigation upon cycling will be performed either in-house or at the synchrotron. Those fast measurements will bring new insight to understand the chemical mechanisms involved during the cycling process.
2) Study of full devices and of All Solid State Batteries (ASSB). The new cell coupled with the high energy of our new in-house diffractometer and using the synchrotron radiation at large scale facilities, will allow transmission measurements through the whole thickness of full devices: i) based on conventional tape casted electrodes using liquid electrolyte, ii) using thick porous electrodes for high energy applications and iii) ASSB based on sulfide or Nasicon-type solid electrolyte.
To reach those ambitious objectives, this PhD project will be integrated with ongoing projects in our lab.nThe PhD student will do its secondments in Large-Scale Facilities in order to investigate both the average structure (X-ray diffraction at ALBA) and local environment of 3d metals (X-ray absorption at SOLEIL) during operando measurements of the new synthetized materials as well as for the ASSBs."
