| Abstract Scope |
Intercalation materials are promising candidates for reversible energy storage and are, for example, used as lithium-battery electrodes, hydrogen-storage compounds, and electrochromic materials. An important issue preventing the more widespread use of these materials is that they undergo structural transformations (∼10% lattice strains) during intercalation, which expand the material, nucleate microcracks, and, ultimately, lead to material failure. By contrast, shape-memory alloys, another class of materials, undergo structural transformations without volume changes despite having large lattice strains. This is because shape-memory alloys form characteristic microstructures that adapt to the material shape and can be reversibly cycled many times. These microstructures form in materials that satisfy very specific lattice geometries and are observed in many shape-memory alloys, but not widely in intercalation materials. Today, I will discuss whether the microstructures resulting from phase transformation in intercalation materials can be crystallographically engineered to resemble the self-accommodating and low-elastic-energy microstructures that form in shape-memory alloys. |