Electrode/Electrolyte Interface Studies in Lithium Batteries Using NMR

Li NMR is a powerful tool to study the surface layer on Li-ion battery electrode materials, especially coupled with techniques giving chemical information such as XPS or FTIR. Concerning the organic part of the interphase, the use of 13C NMR has proved also to be of great interest to understand the decomposition or reaction pathway of organic solvents even though the need of isotopic enrichment and the sensitivity of 13C NMR to the presence of paramagnetic centers complicate the detection. In the case of materials containing transition metals with unpaired electrons, in addition to the chemical composition and quantification, it is possible to extract physical or topological information from electron-nucleus dipolar interaction. The detection and observation of electrode/electrolyte interphase using NMR technique is now applied to a wide range of cathode and anode materials for lithium-ion batteries and is becoming an efficient characterization tool in this research area.