Interface Investigations of a Commercial Lithium Ion Battery Graphite Anode Material by Sputter Depth Profile X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy

Here we provide a detailed X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) study of the electrode/electrolyte interface of a graphite anode from commercial NMC/graphite cells by intense sputter depth profiling using a polyatomic ion gun. The uniqueness of this method lies in the approach using 13-step sputter depth profiling (SDP) to obtain a detailed model of the film structure, which forms at the electrode/electrolyte interface often noted as the solid electrolyte interphase (SEI). In addition to the 13-step SDP, several reference experiments of the untreated anode before formation with and without electrolyte were carried out to support the interpretation. Within this work, it is shown that through charging effects during X-ray beam exposure chemical components cannot be determined by the binding energy (BE) values only, and in addition, that quantification by sputter rates is complicated for composite electrodes. A rough estimation of the SEI thickness was carried out by using the LiF and graphite signals as internal references.