Peering into the future of material characterisation

As someone whose PhD was in solid-state materials chemistry, and spent a lot of time characterising those materials, the idea of being able to study a material while it is not just in its intended device, but while that device is actually being used, is pretty incredible to me.

And yet sticking a whole lithium-ion cell in a spectrometer or diffractometer is exactly what the scientists Clare Sansom spoke to for our feature are doing – and then connecting them up to charge and discharge.