Extended Data Fig. 3: Agglomerate volume changes as a function of electrode loading.
a-c. Extracted volume changes of individual LCO agglomerates as a function of electrode loading (60 wt%, 80 wt% and 92 wt%). The volume of agglomerates increases to a maximum of ~4% on charging before shrinking once again, in-line with previous studies as discussed in the main text. There is a large degree of heterogeneity in the absolute expansion. Some agglomerates in the electrode are inactive and hence remain at a constant volume throughout. The standard deviations of volume changes are as follows: σ60wt% = 0.44 σ80wt% = 0.58 σ92wt% = 0.48. The regions 1 and 2 correspond to different areas (20 μm × 20 μm) of the electrode which were imaged. All data is extracted from volume changes in the third or fourth cycling of the electrode. Data is shown for 40 agglomerates in a, 55 agglomerates in b and 75 agglomerates in c. The cycling rate was 2 C. The uncertainty on each ΔV/V value is ~10% as derived from measurement errors. Error bars are not shown on the plot to avoid obscuring of the data.
