Most rechargeable ion batteries employ transition metal oxides or phosphates as the positive electrode. To facilitate facile migration of the active ions (e.g. Li- or Na-ions), which to some extent governs the battery functionality, the electrodes are typically composed of crystalline materials, wherein the ions are intercalated via well-defined migration pathways. However, the electrode materials are rarely perfectly crystalline and will inherently contain some disorder, which may originate from the material preparation process or be induced by the ion-intercalation process. In some electrode materials the electrochemical performance is damaged by disorder, whereas in other cases good performance is retained even after severe order–disorder transitions. This agrees with the emergence of several ab origine disordered or amorphous oxide-based electrodes with promising electrochemical performance. The term disorder is spanning a wide variety of deviations from an ideal crystal periodicity, from classical defects such as point defects, vacancies, stacking faults etc., to the amorphous state. Disorder, beyond classical defects, in battery electrodes has previously been largely overlooked, and we know little about the nature of the disorder and how it affects the battery performance. Developments in methods for characterisation of local atomic structures now allow us to gain detailed structural knowledge on the disordered part of the electrodes and studies within this field are emerging. This perspective provides a summary of the state-of-the-art within this field and the tendencies we are beginning to see outlined. These will be illustrated through selected examples. Finally, we discuss the key research questions within the field of disorder in electrode materials and the perspectives of answering these.

大多数可充电离子电池采用过渡金属氧化物或磷酸盐作为正极。为了促进活性离子（例如锂离子或钠离子）的轻松迁移，在某种程度上控制电池功能，电极通常由晶体材料组成，其中离子通过明确定义的迁移路径嵌入。然而，电极材料很少是完全结晶的，并且会固有地包含一些无序，这可能源于材料制备过程或由离子嵌入过程引起。在一些电极材料中，电化学性能会因无序而受损，而在其他情况下，即使在严重的有序-无序转变后仍能保持良好的性能。这与出现了几个ab origin具有良好电化学性能的无序或非晶氧化物电极。术语无序跨越了从理想晶体周期性到非晶态等经典缺陷（如点缺陷、空位、堆垛层错等）的各种偏差。除了经典缺陷之外，电池电极中的无序在很大程度上被忽视了，我们对无序的性质及其如何影响电池性能知之甚少。局部原子结构表征方法的发展现在使我们能够获得有关电极无序部分的详细结构知识，并且该领域的研究正在兴起。这个观点总结了该领域的最新技术以及我们开始看到的趋势。这些将通过选定的示例进行说明。最后，我们讨论了电极材料无序领域的关键研究问题以及回答这些问题的观点。