Probing of Electrochemical Reactions for Battery Applications by Atomic Force Microscopy

Electrochemical phenomena underpin a broad spectrum of energy, chemical, and information technologies such as resistive memories and secondary batteries. The optimization of functionalities in these devices requires understanding electrochemical mechanisms on the nanoscale. Even though the nanoscale electrochemical phenomena have been studied by electron microscopies, these methods are limited for analyzing dynamic electrochemical behavior and there is still lack of information on the nanoscale electrochemical mechanisms. The alternative way can be an atomic force microscopy (AFM) because AFM allows nanoscale measurements and, furthermore, electrochemical reaction can be controlled by an application of electric field through AFM tip. Here, I will summarize recent studies to probe nanoscale electrochemical reaction in battery applications by AFM. In particular, we have recently developed electromechanical based AFM techniques for exploring reversible and irreversible electrochemical phenomena on the nanoscale. The present work suggests new strategies to explore fundamental electrochemical mechanisms using the AFM approach and eventually will provide a powerful paradigm for probing spatially resolved electrochemical information for energy applications.