Electrochemical Discovery Laboratory

State-of-the-art analytical and synthetic laboratory for high-quality materials investigations of pristine interfaces and surfaces.

The Electrochemical Discovery Laboratory (EDL) was established under the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research (JCESR), an Argonne-led U.S. Department of Energy Innovation Hub originally focused on next-generation batteries. Today, the EDL’s capabilities extend well beyond batteries to support research across a wide range of electrochemical technologies — including energy storage and conversion, corrosion, electrosynthesis, sensing and electrochemical separations.

The EDL integrates specialized tools for materials synthesis, characterization and electrochemical measurement with advanced tools for structural, chemical and trace-impurity analysis. This approach allows researchers to determine not just how an electrochemical system performs, but why — by tracking how materials and interfaces change under operating conditions across multiple time and length scales.

The strength of the EDL is its ability to produce exceptionally clean and well-controlled experimental environments. For example, researchers can formulate liquid electrolytes with unparalleled control over water content and other impurities, design and deposit solid materials used in electrochemical devices, and quantify performance with precise electroanalytical methods. These measurements are supported by complementary characterization of structure, surface chemistry and ultra-trace contaminants that can strongly influence electrochemical behavior.

By integrating these capabilities in one laboratory, the EDL enables researchers to create model electrode surfaces that are fully characterized (chemically, structurally and electronically), and then transfer these surfaces directly into ultrapure electrochemical environments without exposure to air. This allows for robust investigations of reactive interfaces and short-lived intermediates with a level of control that is rarely achievable elsewhere. This high degree of control also provides an ideal platform for close integration with theory and computation, where precisely tailored experiments can supply high-quality data for models and help accelerate the discovery and optimization of new electrochemical materials and processes.