Neutron spectroscopy studies of hydrogen and oxygen diffusion in energy materials

Zoom webinar | Live stream on Youtube

Peter Fouquet

Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL), Grenoble, France

The European Neutron Source

The development of new materials for “green” energy production and storage is a key activity for the progression towards a circular economy. Neutron spectroscopy provides an ideal supporting tool for this development, because neutrons are highly sensitive to light atoms that play a key role in energy materials, e.g., hydrogen, lithium or sodium.

The Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) and the other LENS facilities provide a diverse offer of spectrometers that can investigate dynamics from local atom-atom vibrations to long-range diffusion at length scales of 10s or 100s of nanometers. With these instruments we can provide information on aspects ranging from chemical bond characterisation to ionic transport.

We will give examples of recent spectroscopy studies of energy materials at ILL and other LENS facilities including work using neutron time-of-flight spectrometers, neutron spin-echo and neutron backscattering spectrometers. The examples concern, among others, catalyst or membrane materials for polyelectrolyte  and solid oxide fuel cells.