EUROPEAN CONGRESS AND EXHIBITION ON ADVANCED MATERIALS AND PROCESSES - EUROMAT 2021

X-ray computed tomography is a versatile technique that has been widely used for material structural analysis at scale ranging from the micrometre to the nanometre. Moreover, phase contrast imaging has brought to light a practical way to enhance visibility between weak absorbing materials and/or small details of differing refractive index within structure, and thus accessing a sharpen overview of the 3D morphology of complex material. Thanks to the high flux of synchrotron X-ray nano-beams and the constant improvement of the detectors, fast acquisition rates are now reachable at the nano-scale, leading to dynamic monitoring of phenomena through in situ and operando measurements. These developments present a real interest for the energy storage applications. In fact, with the rapid development of electric vehicles, portable electronic devices and green energy production, the lithium-ion batteries (LiBs) technology is under extensive development towards a higher energy density along with a higher power density. This challenge requires a deeper understanding of the degradation phenomena occurring at the sub-micro scale in the battery for further developing the materials of tomorrow. This presentation will focus on the hard X-ray nano-tomography set-up developed at the ID16B beamline of the ESRF and its applications toward operando measurements applied to different case studies related to energy materials. This will be discussed as well in regards to the benefits and limitations brought by the extremely brilliant X-ray source EBS developed at the ESRF.