Quantum sensing of electric field distributions of liquid electrolytes with NV-centers in nanodiamonds

To use batteries as large-scale energy storage systems it is necessary to measure and understand their degradation in-situ and in-operando. As a battery’s degradation is often the result of molecular processes inside the electrolyte, a sensing platform which allows to measure the ions with a high spatial resolution is needed. Primary candidates for such a platform are NV-centers in diamonds. We propose to use a single NV-center to deduce the electric field distribution generated by the ions inside the electrolyte through microwave pulse sequences. We show that the electric field can be reconstructed with great accuracy by using a protocol which includes different variations of the free induction decay to obtain the mean electric field components and a pulse sequence consisting of three polarized π-pulses to measure the electric field’s standard deviation σ E . From a semi-analytical ansatz we find that for a lithium ion battery there is a direct relationship between σ E and the ionic concentration. Our results show that it is therefore possible to use NV-centers as sensors to measure both the electric field distribution and the local ionic concentration inside electrolytes.