Electrode Materials and Advanced Characterization

The development and production of sustainable and efficient batteries is a strategic imperative for our society, both for the mobility sector and for grid-based energy storage systems. One of the main challenges is not only to propose and design electrode materials, but also to understand battery mechanisms. This, in turn, calls for a comprehensive understanding of bulk electrode reactions as well as of interfaces and interphases, enabling the development of ultra-high-performance, smart, and sustainable batteries.

In this section, papers presenting and detailing novel material synthesis for electrode materials will be featured, and their electrochemical behavior will be thoroughly explored. In addition to electrochemical techniques, advanced characterization tools, both in situ and ex situ, as well as computational methodologies are employed, either individually or in combination, to disentangle the complex electrochemistry occurring at both electrodes. These approaches aim to elucidate the electronic and ionic processes taking place at the various interfaces, providing a comprehensive picture of the underlying complex dynamics.

The Electrode Materials and Advanced Characterization section of the journal Batteries covers, for example, the following topics in battery-related research, development, and applications:

• The design and development of next-generation anode and cathode materials.
• Structure/property/performance relationships in electrode materials.
• Surface and bulk modification strategies for electrode materials.
• Composite and hybrid electrode materials.
• High-capacity and high-voltage electrode materials.
• Sustainable, Earth-abundant, and low-cost electrode materials.
• Advanced in situ and ex situ characterization techniques.
• Reaction mechanisms and dynamics of electrochemical processes.
• Models and methods for characterizing bulk materials, interfaces, and interphases in batteries.
• Computational methods for material development and for the study of electrode reactions.
• The analysis of electrode materials and interfaces/interphases.
• Stability, degradation, and failure mechanisms of electrode materials.
• Electrode materials for emerging battery chemistries (e.g., Na-ion, K-ion, Mg-ion, solid-state batteries).
• The evolution and characterization of SEI and CEI layers.
• Analytical methods for studying electron and ion transport in batteries.
• Synchrotron-based characterization method.
• Chemometric methods for the analysis of operando datasets in batteries.