A step forward in the search for better anodes for sodium-ion batteries
In 2015, the world used around 16 TW of energy, and this is predicted to rise to about 24 TW by 2035. The need for high-performing energy storage is growing, with the increased use of both intermittent, renewable power sources and electric vehicles. The current technology of choice is lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), which have high specific energies, rate capabilities, and cycle lives. However, LIBs rely on lithium and cobalt, two elements with an uneven geographical distribution. Disruptions to supply can cause price spikes, and there are concerns that the world’s total cobalt reserves may not meet future demand. Scientists are therefore investigating the potential of other battery technologies, which use cheap and widely available materials, such as sodium-ion batteries (SIBs). Although operation and manufacturing processes for SIBs are similar to those for LIBs, they cannot use the graphite anodes that are common in LIS. In research recently published in Energy Fuels, a team of researchers from the University of Oxford investigated how the particle-size distribution of red phosphorus affects the performance of composite anodes for SIBs.
Image: a) TEM image of the composite material made by mixing phosphorus (Dv90 = 0.79 μm) with graphite for 48 h in which graphene planes can be seen on the surface of the phosphorus particle. (b) Plotting the ratio between the integrated areas of the peaks fitted on the photoelectron spectra collected from the composite versus the probing depth shows that surficial P–C chemical bonds gradually decrease and P–P bonds increase as we move deeper toward the particle bulk. The areas are calculated from the fit shown in panels c–e, with the photoelectron spectra of the P 2p region acquired using increasing incident radiation energy.