The solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) on the graphite particles of lithium‐ion battery anodes passivates the anode against electrolyte reduction due to electron transfer reactions, and a stable and well‐passivating SEI is an important prerequisite for a long cycle life of batteries. Despite the importance of the SEI for fast battery cycling and for battery aging, the transport of ions, electrons, and molecules across the SEI is poorly understood. This prevents the development of improved SEI formation protocols for reducing the SEI formation time during battery manufacturing as well as for slowing down SEI aging. In this perspective article, possible transport mechanisms inside the SEI are considered, and an overview of the results of transport studies on SEIs formed on carbon‐based electrodes is given. The conclusions that can be drawn from these results are discussed as well as the most important open questions, which should be addressed in future work.

Laser-based surface processing is an established way for the maskless generation of surface structures and functionalities on a large variety of materials. Laser-driven periodic surface texturing and structuring of thin films is reported for metallic-, semiconductive-, and polymeric films. Here, we introduce subwavelength surface patterning of metal− organic thin films of [Mo 2 S 4 (S 2 CN n Bu 2 ) 2 ], a MoS 2 precursor. Accurate control of one-and two-dimensional (1D and 2D) periodic patterns is achieved on silicon wafers with a pulsed 532 nm ns laser. With suitable combinations of laser polarization, laser pulse energy, the thickness of the SiO 2 passivation layer, and the MoS 2 precursor's thin film thickness, high-quality 1D and 2D self-organized periodic structures are obtained in virtually unlimited areas. The material redistribution related to the pattern formation is thermally driven at low laser energies. Increasing pulse energies beyond a threshold level, in our experiments a factor of 2, fully converts the precursor to MoS 2 .