Electrochemistry mechanisms in organic cathode materials studied by X-ray Raman spectroscopy

While operando X-ray absorption spectroscopy in hard and tender X-ray range can be applied successfully to address the electrochemistry of Li-ion and Li-S batteries, soft XAS spectroscopy, which is a very sensitive tool to probe electronic structure of low-Z organic systems is not compatible with in-situ conditions due to very low penetration of soft X-rays. This limitation is circumvented by X-ray Raman spectroscopy being a hard x-ray photon-in/photon-out technique that can extract soft-XAS information. Large penetration of a hard x-ray probe makes it perfectly suited for bulk studies of organic cathode materials under battery operating conditions. A unique high resolution and large solid angle x-ray Raman spectroscopy end-station at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource will be used to analyze electronic structure of novel electrochemically active organic materials.