Building Better Batteries: Monitoring Particle Size and Composition

Battery electrode (both anode and cathode) raw materials are often powdered materials. Particle physical properties affect surface area and therefore ion and charge transport. Particle size also affects slurry behavior during coating operations. Furthermore, stray coarse (large) particles degrade cell performance. In addition, chemical composition and material structure will drive performance due to changes in, for example, conductivity with carbon morphology. Laser diffraction is often used to determine particle size distribution while Raman imaging can be used for determining chemical composition, for example determining the graphitization of and defects in carbon coatings. Both techniques can be used for research, development, and quality control (QC) efforts.

Join us as we discuss this complementary pair of techniques to address these challenges. After an introduction to the techniques, we illustrate the complementary data that can be obtained from carbon composite powders used in modern lithium ion batteries.