Coming together, falling apart, and starting over, battery style

Whether inside your laptop computer or storing energy outside wind farms, we need high-capacity, long-lasting, and safe batteries. In batteries, as in any electrochemical device, critical processes happen where the electrolyte and active material meet at the solid electrode. However, determining what happens at the meeting point has been difficult because in addition to active molecules, interfaces often contain numerous inactive components. Led by Laboratory Fellow Dr. Julia Laskin, scientists at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have now found a way to carefully design technologically important interfaces by soft landing active molecules onto a small solid-state electrochemical cell. They packed the electrolyte into a solid membrane, deposited active ions on top, and characterized the cell using traditional electrochemical techniques. The device they built allows them to study key reactions in real time in controlled gaseous environments.