Modern day battery technologies are constantly improving. In addition to broader efforts to increase life-span and energy density, batteries are also diversifying to support a broadening array of applications: photovoltaics and green energy installations, consumer electronics, electric vehicles, railway industries, manufacturing sectors, and more.

In a recent market analysis report, Grand View Research projected that the global lithium-ion battery market alone – valued in 2019 at $32.9 billion – would be growing at a compound rate of 13.0% year-over-year from 2020 to 2027 [1].

It begs the question: how is battery performance optimized? And more relevantly: how have contemporary materials characterization methods evolved to support this fast-growing industry?

Next on Covalent Academy, we set off to answer those questions. In particular, the upcoming webinar event will take a deeper look into advanced Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) methods for optimizing battery performance.

Guest speaker Dr. Nate Kirchhofer, an Applications Scientist at Asylum Research will be breaking down some of the exciting advances in AFM instrumentation that dial in to the unique needs of contemporary battery research. He’ll describe the challenges that these advancements addressed, and the new insights you can access through AFM analysis.

1. What processes and properties of batteries can be optimized to improve performance?

2. Which of these key performance factors can you investigate using Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM)?

3. How does AFM work?

4. How have advances in AFM technology overcome past challenges in battery characterization?

5. What is operando battery analysis? How is it performed using an AFM?  

6. What makes operando characterization so valuable to battery performance optimization? What questions can it help you answer?