Understanding the critical role of interfaces and surfaces in energy materials

“能源材料”涵盖了广泛的技术，从热电到燃料电池、电池、光伏和磁热学等。许多这些能量材料都是作为多组分固态器件发展起来的，这些器件固有地具有许多电化学活性界面。正是这些界面，例如固体/固体，液体/固体或气体/固体，控制着设备的功能，并且通常是退化的来源。目前用于分析这些设备及其组件的许多技术依赖于高真空环境中的理想系统，以获得近表面化学的信息。这需要使用事后操作分析，并且清楚地表示与设备运行条件存在重大不匹配。人们越来越认识到，需要进行现场测量，但测量本身是困难和苛刻的。我们的目的是发展能源材料在操作中特性的专业知识。这将建立在我们现有的表面分析和原位测量的专业知识和能力的基础上。例如，在823K下工作的燃料电池将受到温度梯度、阳离子偏析、电位梯度、中毒和由这些条件引起的化学变化的影响，所有这些都是相互关联的，但迄今为止，分离单个贡献是不可能的。涉及固体电池、渗透膜和共电解槽的界面和表面化学的类似问题也将使用这些技术来解决。通过发展运行中的相关特征，我们的目标是对这些过程进行反卷积，并提供一系列能源系统中关键过程的详细机制理解。

'Energy materials' encompass a wide range of technologies, ranging from thermoelectrics to fuel cells, batteries, photovoltaics and magnetocalorics, among others. Many of these energy materials are developed as multi-component solid state devices and these devices inherently possess a number of electrochemically active interfaces. It is these interfaces, e.g. solid/solid, liquid/solid or gas/solid, that control the function of the device, and are typically the source of degradation. Many current techniques used to analyse these devices and their components rely on idealised systems in high vacuum environments to gain information on the near surface chemistry. This necessitates the use of post-mortem operation analysis and clearly represents a significant mismatch from the conditions under which devices operate. Increasingly it is acknowledged that in-operando measurements are required, but that the measurements are themselves difficult and demanding. It is our intention to develop expertise with in-operando characterisation of energy materials. This will build on our existing expertise and capability in surface analysis and in-situ measurements. As an example, a fuel cell operating at 823K will be subjected to temperature gradients, cation segregation, potential gradients, poisoning and chemical changes induced by these conditions, all of which are inter-related, but separating the individual contributions has so far proved impossible. Similar issues involving the interface and surface chemistry of solid state batteries, permeation membranes and co-electrolysers will also be addressed using these techniques. By developing in-operando correlative characterisation we aim to deconvolute these processes and provide detailed mechanistic understating of the critical processes in a range of energy systems.