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A new sodium iron phosphate as a stable high-rate cathode material for sodium ion batteries

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Abstract

Low-cost room-temperature sodium-ion batteries (SIBs) are expected to promote the development of stationary energy storage applications. However, due to the large size of Na+, most Na+ host structures resembling their Li+ counterparts show sluggish ion mobility and destructive volume changes during Na ion (de)intercalation, resulting in unsatisfactory rate and cycling performances. Herein, we report a new type of sodium iron phosphate (Na0.71Fe1.07PO4), which exhibits an extremely small volume change (~ 1%) during desodiation. When applied as a cathode material for SIBs, this new phosphate delivers a capacity of 78 mA·h·g−1 even at a high rate of 50 C and maintains its capacity over 5,000 cycles at 20 C. In situ synchrotron characterization disclosed a highly reversible solid-solution mechanism during charging/discharging. The findings are believed to contribute to the development of high-performance batteries based on Earth-abundant elements.

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Acknowledgements

Financial Support from Australian Research Council (ARC) through its Discovery Projects (DPs) and Linkage Projects (LPs) is acknowledged. The authors also acknowledge the facilities, and the scientific and technical assistance, of the Australian Microscopy & Microanalysis Research Facility (AMMRF) at the Centre for Microscopy and Microanalysis (CMM), The University of Queensland, as well as the beamline at the Australian Synchrotron, part of Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Nanomaterials Centre, School of Chemical Engineering and Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, 4072, Australia

    Xiaobo Zhu, Yuxiang Hu, Bin Luo & Lianzhou Wang

  2. National Institute for Materials Science, 1-2-1 Sengen, Tsukuba-city, Ibaraki, 305-0047, Japan

    Takashi Mochiku, Hiroki Fujii & Kiyoshi Ozawa

  3. Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Science at Microscale and Department of Chemistry, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, China

    Kaibin Tang

  4. School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, NSW, 2007, Australia

    Zhenguo Huang

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  1. Xiaobo Zhu
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  2. Takashi Mochiku
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  9. Lianzhou Wang
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Correspondence to Lianzhou Wang.

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Zhu, X., Mochiku, T., Fujii, H. et al. A new sodium iron phosphate as a stable high-rate cathode material for sodium ion batteries. Nano Res. 11, 6197–6205 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-018-2139-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-018-2139-0

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