Neutron Imaging at the ILL for Li-Ion Battery and Fuel Cell Research

Abstract

NeXT-Grenoble is a Neutron and X-ray Tomography facility developed and now running in Grenoble, born from a collaboration between the University Grenoble Alpes and the European Neutron Source the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL). This instrument combines the uniquely intense neutron flux offered by the ILL with laboratory X-ray tomography in order to obtain bi-modal imaging, thus taking advantage of the reciprocal benefits of each respective method. As a preliminary step, a medium resolution neutron radiography/tomography instrument was implemented in 2016 allowing users to perform successful material characterisations in a wide range of applications such as Li-batteries, proton-exchange membrane fuel cells, porous/geomaterials and medical prosthetics. The specific transmission proprieties of neutrons (low attenuation of metals compared with relatively high absorption in light elements such as lithium and hydrogen, and isotopic differentiation, e.g., between 6Li and 7Li or 1H and 2H) and the high flux of ILL’s reactor is now enabling researchers to take this type of tomographic set-up to its limits in terms of the inherent compromise between temporal and spatial resolution. In order to exploit the complimentarity of neutron and X-ray imaging, a laboratory X-ray ensemble has been integrated (see Figure 1) and is operational since 2018, along with an ensemble of high resolution neutron detectors. This has made possible for the first time full visualisation of in operando interactions between complex phenomena, notably in the domains of battery and hydrogen fuel cell research – examples of which will be shown here. Figure 1