Quantitative Analysis of Wide-Area Surface Microstructure & Elemental Distribution

A study conducted by Teruki Kato et al. was published in the Scientific Reports.

The combination of scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) maps enables the detailed analysis of the relationship between the microstructures and elemental compositions on material surfaces. However, traditional SEM-EDS analyses often lack both comprehensiveness and quantitativeness, potentially leading to inaccuracies in representing an entire sample and variations in results based on the analyst’s approach.

In this study, an objective SEM-EDS analytical process is introduced to overcome these limitations. Comprehensiveness is achieved by acquiring a large volume of SEM images through automated capturing, while quantitativeness is ensured by applying microstructural analysis based on image features, model-based dimension reduction, clustering methods, and similarity analysis of elemental distributions using statistical distances. The proposed method was successfully applied to analyze the degradation of lithium-ion battery electrodes, yielding objective results that corroborate traditional qualitative insights into the changes in morphology and composition of solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) films accompanying degradation.

Title: A Comprehensive and Quantitative SEM–EDS Analytical Process Applied to Lithium-ion Battery Electrodes
Authors: Kato, T., Goto, K., Niwa, T., Shimizu, T., Fujii, A., Okumura, B., Oka, H., Kadoura, H.
Journal Name: Scientific Reports
Published: February 13, 2025
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-89362-w