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SLAC Uses Nobel Prize-Winning Technique To Investigate Battery Fires (stanford.edu)
An anonymous reader quotes an announcement from SLAC:
Scientists from Stanford University and the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have captured the first atomic-level images of finger-like growths called dendrites that can pierce the barrier between battery compartments and trigger short circuits or fires... This is the first study to examine the inner lives of batteries with cryo-electron microscopy, or cryo-EM, a technique whose ability to image delicate, flash-frozen proteins and other "biological machines" in atomic detail was honored with the 2017 Nobel Prize in chemistry... The ability to see this level of detail for the first time with cryo-EM will give scientists a powerful tool for understanding how batteries and their components work at the most fundamental level and for investigating why high-energy batteries used in laptops, cell phones, airplanes and electric cars sometimes fail, the researchers said...
In cryo-EM, samples are flash-frozen by dipping them into liquid nitrogen, then sliced for examination under the microscope. You can freeze a whole coin-cell battery at a particular point in its charge-discharge cycle, remove the component you're interested in and see what is happening inside that component at an atom-by-atom scale. You could even create a stop-action movie of battery activity by stringing together images made at different points in the cycle... Zooming in, they used a different technique to look at the way electrons bounced off the atoms in the dendrite, revealing the locations of individual atoms in both the crystal and its solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) coating. When they added a chemical commonly used to improve battery performance, the atomic structure of the SEI coating became more orderly, and they think this may help explain why the additive works.
In cryo-EM, samples are flash-frozen by dipping them into liquid nitrogen, then sliced for examination under the microscope. You can freeze a whole coin-cell battery at a particular point in its charge-discharge cycle, remove the component you're interested in and see what is happening inside that component at an atom-by-atom scale. You could even create a stop-action movie of battery activity by stringing together images made at different points in the cycle... Zooming in, they used a different technique to look at the way electrons bounced off the atoms in the dendrite, revealing the locations of individual atoms in both the crystal and its solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) coating. When they added a chemical commonly used to improve battery performance, the atomic structure of the SEI coating became more orderly, and they think this may help explain why the additive works.
Take away its credit card!
SLAC = Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, renamed to SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in 2008.
Really, Stanford? Are you going to look at their hopes and dreams next?
#DeleteChrome
== "Marketing drivel".
thegodmovie.com - watch it
To inject liquid Helium to the dendrites at near 0.0 Kelvin inside of giant vacuum room and put the electronic microscopes to observe these dendrites.
Later, to apply X-rays to them.
Second, UV-rays to them.
Finally, Sun-rays to them.
And all will be recorded with fastest TV cameras.
I use Nobel-Prize winning technology antibiotics to combat my bacterial lung infection after my doctor used Nobel-prize winning x-ray technology to diagnose it.
It looks like the researchers missed chemistry 101. We all know 'why' batteries can fail because it is chemical and energy can be released with a chemical reaction. It's just we haven't found a "cheap and economic" solution to resolve 'how' to stop batteries from failing.
Store your batteries and devices inside explosion- and fire-proof storage bags.
Many short videos, but starts at the proper spot https://www.youtube.com/watch?... (an AD being viewed unpredictable).