A team of American and Chinese researchers has developed a new tool that could aid in the quest for better batteries and fuel cells. Although battery technology has come a long way since Alessandro Volta first stacked metal discs in a "voltaic pile" to generate electricity, major improvements are still needed to meet the energy challenges of the future, such as powering electric cars and storing renewable energy cheaply and efficiently.

The key to the needed improvements likely lies in the nanoscale, said Jiangyu Li, a professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Washington in Seattle. The nanoscale is a realm so tiny that the movement of a few atoms or molecules can shift the landscape. Li and his colleagues have built a new window into this world to help scientists better understand how batteries really work. They describe their nanoscale probe in the Journal of Applied Physics, from AIP Publishing. 

Batteries, and their close kin fuel cells, produce electricity through chemical reactions. The rates at which these reactions occur determine how fast the battery can charge, how much power it can provide, and how quickly it degrades.

Although the material in a battery electrode may look uniform to the human eye, to the atoms themselves, the environment is surprisingly diverse.

Near the surface and at the interfaces between materials, huge shifts in properties can occur -- and the shifts can affect the reaction rates in complex and difficult-to-understand ways.

Research in the last ten to fifteen years has revealed just how much local variations in material properties can affect the performance of batteries and other electrochemical systems, Li said.