Learning heterogeneous reaction kinetics from X-ray videos pixel by pixel

Abstract Reaction rates at spatially heterogeneous, unstable interfaces are notoriously difficult to quantify, yet are essential in engineering many chemical systems, such as batteries 1 and electrocatalysts 2 . Experimental characterizations of such materials by operando microscopy produce rich image datasets 3–6 , but data-driven methods to learn physics from these images are still lacking because of the complex coupling of reaction kinetics, surface chemistry and phase separation 7 . Here we show that heterogeneous reaction kinetics can be learned from in situ scanning transmission X-ray microscopy (STXM) images of carbon-coated lithium iron phosphate (LFP) nanoparticles. Combining a large dataset of STXM images with a thermodynamically consistent electrochemical phase-field model, partial differential equation (PDE)-constrained optimization and uncertainty quantification, we extract …