The presence of water on either the anode or cathode in a lithium-ion battery can seriously hinder its performance. A common method currently used to measure water on electrodes is a Karl Fisher titration which requires several reagents and has a high continuous cost of analysis.
Thermogravimetric analysis hyphenated to mass spectrometry (TG-MS) provides not only accurate data on the water adsorbed to the surface of an electrode, but also provides information on other small molecules based on molecular weight. This application note describes how thermogravimetric analysis hyphenated to mass spectrometry provides a method for real time detection of water and CO2 adsorption and desorption of electrode samples.