Speaker: Feifei Yang, National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory / University of Science & Technology of China
Program Description
For many research fields, including geoscience and materials science, it is very important to understand the relationship between the observed macroscopic properties/phenomena and the structure/morphology of the investigated specimen at different length scales. Hot topics in geoscience (such as the geologic carbon sequestration, the enhanced oil recovery with CO2 injection, etc.) can only be addressed using the information gathered at different length scales; in material science, the goal of “material by design” even more crucially relies on the understanding of the behavior of the material when scaled up and/or down.
I will present two scientific projects in my talk. In one case, we investigated the changes in chemical phase, oxidation state, and morphology of a high voltage cathode material: Li1.2Mn0.525Ni0.175Co0.1O2. The findings provide important insights into the failure. In the other project, we characterize the sandstone sample, which is considered to be good candidate underground formation for CO2 geological sequestration.
These two scientific case studies utilize X-ray microscopy techniques including medical CT, synchrotron micro-CT, and transmission X-ray microscopy, to cover length scales ranging from cm down to tens of nanometers. The information retrieved using different techniques provides a complete picture at macro-meso-nano scales.
