Credit: Guang Yang/Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Energy
ORNL researchers used surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy, or SERS, from a gold nanoparticle monolayer, which is capable of depicting the solvation structure of cations in electrolytes near the solid–liquid interface in a lithium-ion battery. The nanogap SERS provides a unique, high-sensitive platform for studying the solvation structure and ion transport in a wide category of electrolyte systems at electrified interfaces.