Dr. Paul MacCready repeatedly urged us to do more with less, getting big results from modest use of materials. That philosophy may be upheld yet once again by researchers from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB) Institute of Soft Matter and Functional Materials. As reported here many times, people like Dr. Yi Cui at Stanford University, researchers at MIT, the Fraunhoffer Institute in Germany and many others are attempting to find the magic combination of ingredients that will allow us to transcend the weight penalty we currently trade for payload in heavier-than-desired electric aircraft. Scientists at the HZB, led by by Prof. Matthias Ballauff have directly observed for the first time a lithium-silicon half-cell during its charging and discharge cycles. Dr. Beatrix-Kamelia Seidlhofero carried out the experiments using the neutron source located at the Institute Laue-Langevin in Grenoble, France. She explains, “We were able to precisely track where the lithium ions adsorb in the silicon electrode using neutron reflectometry methods, and also …
