Slashdot Mirror
Degraded Electrodes Observed In Aging Batteries
schliz writes "Scientists have identified nanoscale changes in aging lithium-ion batteries that could be responsible for their degradation over time. By dissecting and examining dead batteries, they found that some lithium was irreversibly lost from the positive to negative electrode of dead batteries, and no longer participated in charging and discharging. They discovered that finely-structured nanomaterials on dead batteries' electrodes had coarsened in size, and theorise that the coarsening of the cathode may be responsible for the loss of lithium."
Sure, the net effect is at the macro-scale. But we now have the ability to look at these systems at the nano-scale and investigate why the "damn chemical reaction" gets going in the first place. "Nano" here says more about the equipment used to look at the battery than the battery itself.
And instead of just taking the "attributed" reason they bothered to do some work and report on what they suspect is the actual physical/chemical cause rather than just a catch-all "disorder". Since that helps with trying to reduce the problem.
Why didn't you do that sometime in the last 20 years if it was so damn obvious?