Making sodium-ion batteries that last
- Date:
- February 15, 2017
- Source:
- American Chemical Society
- Summary:
- Lithium-ion batteries have become essential in everyday technology. But these power sources can explode under certain circumstances and are not ideal for grid-scale energy storage. Sodium-ion batteries are potentially a safer and less expensive alternative, but current versions don't last long enough yet for practical use. Now, scientists have developed an anode material that enables sodium-ion batteries to perform at high capacity over hundreds of cycles, according to their report.
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Lithium-ion batteries have become essential in everyday technology. But these power sources can explode under certain circumstances and are not ideal for grid-scale energy storage. Sodium-ion batteries are potentially a safer and less expensive alternative, but current versions don't last long enough yet for practical use. Now, scientists have developed an anode material that enables sodium-ion batteries to perform at high capacity over hundreds of cycles, according to their report in the journal ACS Nano.
For years, scientists have considered sodium-ion batteries a safer and lower-cost candidate for large-scale energy storage than lithium-ion. But so far, sodium-ion batteries have not operated at high capacity for long-term use. Lithium and sodium have similar properties in many ways, but sodium ions are much larger than lithium ions. This size difference leads to the rapid deterioration of a key battery component. Meilin Liu, Chenghao Yang and colleagues wanted to find an anode material that would give sodium-ion batteries a longer life.
The researchers developed a simple approach to making a high-performance anode material by binding an antimony-based mineral onto sulfur-doped graphene sheets. Incorporating the anode into a sodium-ion battery allowed it to perform at 83 percent capacity over 900 cycles. The researchers say this is the best reported performance for a sodium-ion battery with an antimony-based anode material. To ultimately commercialize their technology, they would need to scale up battery fabrication while maintaining its high performance.
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Materials provided by American Chemical Society. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
Journal Reference:
- Xunhui Xiong, Guanhua Wang, Yuwei Lin, Ying Wang, Xing Ou, Fenghua Zheng, Chenghao Yang, Jeng-Han Wang, Meilin Liu. Enhancing Sodium Ion Battery Performance by Strongly Binding Nanostructured Sb2S3 on Sulfur-Doped Graphene Sheets. ACS Nano, 2016; 10 (12): 10953 DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.6b05653
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