With the increasing demand of lithium-ion batteries, it is critical to understand the structure and composition of lithium-ion materials with high spatial resolution.
STEM/EELS has been a routine technique to understand the structure-property of various materials. However, lithium-ion materials are susceptible to electron beam damage. Their crystalline structure would be modified and chemical composition including bonding information can be changed with electron beam.
Aberrated-corrected STEM are reported to characterize the atomic level structure of lithium-ion materials. (Please refer to another application note of STEM/ABF to directly visualize light element atoms including lithium atoms in crystalline phase)
However, chemistry information at atomic level is still missing from STEM. Though EELS has been frequently used for beam robust materials, it is challenging to get atomic level EELS results on lithium-ion materials due to the beam effect.