Soft x-ray transmission microscopy on lithium-rich layered-oxide cathode materials

Energy-dependent full field transmission soft X-ray microscopy (TXM) is able to give a full picture at the nanometer scale of the chemical state and spatial distribution of oxygen and other elements relevant for battery materials, providing pixel-by-pixel absorption spectrum. We show different methods to localize chemical inhomogeneities in Li1.2 Mn0.56 Ni0.16 Co0.08 O2 particles with and without VOx coating extracted from electrodes at different states of charge. Considering the 3d(Mn,Ni)-2p(O) hybridization, it has been possible to discriminate the chemical state of Mn and Ni in addition to the one of O. Different oxidation states correspond to specific features in the O-K spectra. To localize sample regions with specific compositions we apply two different methods. In the first, the pixel-by-pixel ratios of images collected at different key energies clearly highlight local inhomogeneities. In the second, introduced here for the first time, we directly correlate corresponding pixels of the two images on a xy scatter plot that we call phase map, where we can visualize the distributions as function of thickness as well as absorption artifacts. We can select groups of pixels, and then map regions with similar spectral features. Core-shell distributions of composition are clearly shown in these samples. The coating appears in part to frustrate some of the usual chemical evolution. In addition, we could directly observe several further aspects, such as: distribution of conducting carbon; inhomogeneous state of charge within the electrode; molecular oxygen profiles within a particle. The latter suggests a surface loss with respect to the bulk but an accumulation layer at intermediate depth that could be assigned to retained O2 . © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.