Lithium is hard to measure reliably.
Contamination hides below the detection threshold of bulk techniques.
Spatial information gets destroyed in sample preparation.
And when something fails, the data to explain why often does not exist.
Massbox changes that.
Powered by Laser Ablation Laser Ionization Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometry (LALI-TOF-MS) Technology: Get the full chemistry of any solid sample, wherever you need it, within minutes.
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Shorten your R&D timeline and bring next-generation batteries to market faster. Spatial understanding of lithium and SEI layer components in electrodes is critical to optimizing the cell's performance, enhancing cycle life, and improving safety.
Characterizing the uniformity of the electrode's active elements ensures consistent quality and eliminates defects before expensive failures occur. Maximize production efficiency with precise analytical data.
Establish market leadership with advanced analytical capabilities that competitors can't match. Access breakthrough battery development insights that enable faster innovation cycles and more efficient deployment of advanced battery technologies.
Touch-screen controls and automatic element identification deliver laboratory-quality results without complex operations or specialized training. Transform your entire team into elemental analysis experts immediately.
Most techniques treat lithium as a problem to work around. X-ray methods lack the sensitivity. Acid digestion destroys the spatial information that explains where lithium is and how it is distributed. Massbox measures lithium directly from solid samples—in the rock, in the electrode, through the depth of a cycled anode—without digestion and without changing instruments.
Lithium concentrations in geologic samples span orders of magnitude, from trace levels in accessory minerals to several weight percent in lithium ore.
Using granodiorite and lithium ore as reference materials, Massbox built a calibration curve spanning 12 ppm to 2.66 wt% in a single session—quantifying lithium across the full range a heterogeneous deposit presents, without sending samples to a centralized laboratory.
Related Reading: Download Application Note
In a silicon anode, how lithium distributes through the electrode at different charge states determines whether a formation protocol is working or accumulating non-recoverable lithium.
Depth profiling through a 40-micron silicon anode at top and bottom of charge, Massbox mapped lithium layer by layer down to the copper current collector — revealing accumulation differences between charge states and between positions in the same cell that bulk analysis would miss entirely.
Related Reading: Download Application Note
Electrode contamination is easy to miss. A foreign particle on an electrode surface will not appear in a bulk measurement and may be invisible to optical inspection. But it shows up later—in a failed cell. Most techniques only report the elements they were asked to look for. Massbox captures the full periodic table at every laser spot — so unexpected constituents appear in the data whether the user anticipated them or not.
In a study of a graphite anode with known stainless steel contamination, Massbox confirmed the steel particles in two minutes and found an NMC cathode particle that no one was looking for.
That NMC particle indicated cross-contamination between electrode lines—identified without additional analysis, because the full elemental picture was already in the data.
Related reading: Download Application Note
In a cobalt-bearing thin section, Massbox mapped zinc at parts-per-million concentrations—below the detection threshold of the x-ray techniques used on the same sample.
Trace element distribution alongside major element maps adds context on the mineral host and its formation history. Bulk chemistry cannot supply that context. In exploration, that context informs extraction strategy and processing decisions downstream.
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A bulk measurement tells you the average composition of a sample. For most battery materials and mineral samples, the average is not the whole story. What matters is where elements are concentrated, where they are absent, and where boundaries fall. Elemental mapping shows where chemistry is happening, not just whether it is present. At every pixel across areas up to 90 mm by 90 mm, Massbox captures the full mass spectrum.
In critical mineral exploration, knowing which mineral hosts the element of interest determines whether a deposit is economically viable and how to process it. Massbox delivers that answer from a wide-area survey to detailed mineral characterization in a single session.
In a thin section core plug study, Massbox mapped a 9.4 mm by 7.35 mm area across composite grains at 50-micron resolution—revealing element groupings for mineral identification and trace lithium in distinct grains.
Related Reading: Download Application Note
Non-uniform active material distribution in an electrode causes local overcharging and lithium plating that bulk measurements will not detect.
When Massbox mapped a silicon carbon composite anode with visible surface irregularities, the irregular regions turned out to be rich in carbon and silicon carbide, not silicon agglomeration as initially assumed. The spatial picture corrected the diagnosis, and identified silicon carbide as a distinct compound that near-line instruments often cannot distinguish from its constituents.
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The processes that degrade battery performance don't stop at the surface. The SEI builds up through cycling. Lithium accumulates unevenly. Transition metals migrate. Understanding these depth-dependent processes requires depth-dependent data. Massbox removes material layer by layer, capturing the full mass spectrum at each pass—a three-dimensional elemental record of what is where, and at what depth.
Profiling through a 40-micron silicon anode, Massbox resolved differences in lithium accumulation between charge states and between positions in the same cell—patterns consistent with non-recoverable lithium in the SEI and potential plating at the current collector interface.
The 3D reconstruction also identified trace cobalt in discrete spatial clusters, raising a question about cathode migration that the same instrument and method can follow up on the unassembled electrode.
Related Reading: Download Application Note
Working with researchers at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory's Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Light Source (SSRL), Massbox was used alongside synchrotron x-ray techniques to map SEI formation in lithium metal anodes after one cycle and after 100 cycles.
The depth-resolved data distinguished inorganic and organic SEI species and resolved nickel migration from the cathode within the anode profile—the light-element and organic dimension that x-ray methods leave out. LALI-TOF-MS did not replace the synchrotron techniques. It completed them.
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The gap between the question and the answer is where battery development stalls. Massbox closes it — directly from solid samples, at the point of need.
Get cleaner spectra, more reliable elemental verification, and simultaneous results across the full periodic table in a single session.
