Power struggle: shedding light on why batteries degrade

"The higher the voltages, the greater the energy [batteries] can carry, but at that high voltage the battery is really sensitive and really prone to degradations," Liu said. According to Liu, fluorescence microscopy is ideal for studying electrochemical systems due to its ability to detect a single molecule emitting visible light. "What I'm fascinated about is that electrochemical cells and biological cells are actually very similar," she said. "In our body there are also a generation of transient species like free radicals or heterogeneities, which people study day to day in biology using fluorescence microscopy. "It's a very complementary tool to all these other fascinating tools that people have already used to study batteries and materials.