What drives rechargeable battery decay? Depends on how many times you've charged it

A piece of battery cathode after 10 charging cycles. A machine-learning feature detection and quantification algorithm allowed researchers to automatically single out the most severely damaged particles of interest, which are highlighted in the image.

A multi-institution team of researchers have found that factors behind battery decay change over time. Early on, decay seems to be driven by properties of individual electrode particles but after several dozen charging cycles, it's how these particles are put together that matters more.