TLDR: CV is speed dating for electrodes. You sweep the potential, watch who reacts, and decide if there’s real chemistry or just good lighting.

CV maps who’s oxidizing, who’s reducing, and who’s lying about being reversible. It won’t tell you capacity, but it will expose whether your chemistry actually works like a battery or just wants the aesthetic.

Cyclic voltammetry (CV) is one of the most widely used electrochemical techniques in battery research: it provides fundamental insights into the redox behavior, stability, reaction kinetics, and reversibility of electrode materials. By sweeping the potential of a working electrode in a cyclic manner and recording the resulting current, researchers can understand the electrochemical processes that govern battery performance.

In the context of rechargeable batteries such as lithium-ion, sodium-ion, and emerging solid-state systems, CV is a powerful diagnostic tool for evaluating electrode materials, electrolytes, and interfacial phenomena.

In CV, the potential of the working electrode is swept linearly versus time at a defined scan rate (ν), and reversed once a set potential limit is reached. The resulting current response (I) is plotted as a function of potential (V), generating a cyclic voltammogram. The resulting voltammogram contains oxidation and reduction peaks, corresponding to charge storage and release processes within the electrode material as shown in the Figure.