Given the merits of affordable cost, superior low‐temperature performance, and advanced safe properties, sodium‐ion batteries (SIBs) have exhibited great development potential in large scale energy ...storage applications. Among various emerging carbonaceous anode materials applied for SIBs, hard carbon (HC) has recently gained significant attention regarding their relatively low cost, wide availability, and optimal overall performance. However, the insufficient initial Coulombic efficiency (ICE) of HC is the main bottlenecks, which is inevitably hindering their further commercial applications. Herein, an in‐depth holistic exposition about the reasons causing the unsatisfied ICE and the recent advances on effective improvement strategies are comprehensively summarized in this review, which have been divided into two aspects including the intrinsic property (degree of graphitization, pore structure, defect, et al.) and the extrinsic factor (electrolyte, electrode materials, et al.). In addition, future prospects and perspectives on HC to enable practical application in SIBs are also briefly outlined.
Initial Coulombic efficiency (ICE) is the key concern related to energy density for sodium‐ion battery practical applications. Herein, an in‐depth holistic exposition about the reasons causing the unsatisfied ICE of hard carbon anode, and the recent advances on effective improvement strategies are also comprehensively summarized, including the intrinsic properties and the extrinsic factors.
Organic electroactive compounds hold great potential to act as cathode material for organic sodium‐ion batteries (OSIBs) because of their environmental friendliness, sustainability, and high ...theoretical capacity. Although some organic electrodes have been developed with good performance, their practical application is still obstructed by some inherent drawbacks such as low conductivity and solubility in organic electrolytes. In addition, research on OSIBs has been mainly focused on the performance of electrodes on the material level and neglected the trade‐off relationship between the high redox potentials and specific capacities. Almost all organic cathodes used in OSIBs lack the ability to be charged first in half‐cells because of the absence of detachable sodium ions, resulting in low attractiveness when assembling full cells with hard carbon as anode. Here, this review presents several existing reaction mechanisms in OSIBs and designs of organic cathode materials. Furthermore, strategies are proposed in order to provide guidelines for improving their performance according to some critical parameters (output voltage, specific capacity, and cycle life) in potential practical OSIBs, and some accounts of organic materials assembled in full cells are summarized. Finally, the challenges and prospects of organic electrodes for OSIBs are also discussed in this review.
A comprehensive summary on how to improve the electronic performance of organic cathode materials for the potential commercial application of organic sodium‐ion batteries is presented.
Hard carbon anodes with all-plateau capacities below 0.1 V are prerequisites to achieve high energy density sodium ion storages, which are holding promises for the future sustainable energy ...technologies. However, challenges in removing defects and improving the insertion of sodium ions heading off the development of hard carbon to achieve this goal. Herein, we reported a highly cross-linked topological graphitized carbon using biomass corn cobs through a two-step rapid thermal annealing strategy. The topological graphitized carbon constructed with long-range graphene nanoribbons and cavities/tunnels provides a multi-directional insertions of sodium ions whilst eliminating defects to absorb sodium ions at high voltage region. Evidences from advanced technique including in-situ XRD, in-situ Raman and in-situ/ex-situ TEM indicate that the sodium ions appear Na cluster formation between curved topological graphite layers and in the topological cavity of adjacent graphite band entanglements. The reported topological insertion mechanism enables outstanding battery performance with a single full low-voltage plateau capacity of 290 mAh g
, which is almost 97% of the total capacity. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
The safety of energy storage equipment has always been a stumbling block to the development of battery, and sodium ion battery is no exception. However, as an ultimate solution, the use of ...non‐flammable electrolyte is susceptible to the side effects, and its poor compatibility with electrode, causing failure of batteries. Here, we report a non‐flammable electrolyte design to achieve high‐performance sodium ion battery, which resolves the dilemma via regulating the solvation structure of electrolyte by hydrogen bonds and optimizing the electrode–electrolyte interphase. The reported non‐flammable electrolyte allows stable charge‐discharge cycling of both sodium vanadium phosphate@hard carbon and Prussian blue@hard carbon full pouch cell for more than 120 cycles with a capacity retention of >85 % and high cycling Coulombic efficiency (99.7 %).
Safety is always a topic of concern after reports of devices catching fire due to battery failure. Using non‐flammable electrolyte as an ultimate solution is difficult to be applied to commercial batteries because of various problems such as poor compatibility, high viscosity and so on. Here, we report a non‐flammable electrolyte with excellent comprehensive performance, and applied it to sodium‐ion pouch cells with different promising materials.
Growing demands on energy storage devices have inspired a tremendous amount of research on rechargeable batteries. Future generations of rechargeable batteries are required to have high energy ...density, long lifespan, low cost, high safety, low environmental impact, and wide commercial affordability. To achieve these goals, significant efforts are underway to focus on electrolyte chemistry, electrode engineering, and new designs for energy storage systems. Herein, a comprehensive overview of an innovative sodium‐based hybrid metal‐ion battery (HMIBs) for advanced next‐generation energy storage is presented. Recent advances on sodium‐based HMIBs from the development of reformulated or novel materials associated with Na+ ions and other metal ions (such as Li+, K+, Mg2+, Zn2+, etc.), are summarized in this work. Daniell cell and “rocking‐chair” type batteries are covered. Finally, the current challenges and future remedies in terms of the design and fabrication of new electrolytes, cathodes, and anodes for advanced HMIBs are discussed in this report.
The sodium‐based hybrid metal‐ion battery strategy, which enables low cost, high safety, and high performance, is reviewed. An overview is provided of the advances, electrochemical performance, and electrochemical behavior of hybrid metalions. A perspective is provided as well future research directions toward practical use beyond the single metal‐ion battery.
Large reserves, high capacity, and low cost are the core competitiveness of disordered carbon materials as excellent anode materials for sodium‐ion batteries (SIBs). And the existence and improper ...treatment of a large number of organic solid wastes will aggravate the burden on the environment, therefore, it is significant to transform wastes into carbon‐based materials for sustainable energy utilization. Herein, a kind of hard carbon materials are reported with waste biomass‐foam as the precursor, which can improve the sodium storage performance through pre‐oxidation strategy. The introduction of oxygen‐containing groups can promote structural cross‐linking, and inhibit the melting and rearrangement of carbon structure during high‐temperature carbonization that produces a disordered structure with a suitable degree of graphitization. Moreover, the micropore structure are also regulated during the high‐temperature carbonization process, which is conducive to the storage of sodium ions in the low‐voltage plateau region. The optimized sample as an electrode material exhibits excellent reversible specific capacity (308.0 mAh g−1) and initial Coulombic efficiency (ICE, 90.1%). In addition, a full cell with the waste foam‐derived hard carbon anode and a Na3V2(PO4)3 cathode is constructed with high ICE and energy density. This work provides an effective strategy to conversion the waste to high‐value hard carbon anode for sodium‐ion batteries.
A unique waste foam‐derived carbon is gained via pre‐oxidation technology with balancing the degree of graphitization, pore structure and oxygen containing groups to achieve a great sodium storage performance. The as‐prepared hard carbon exhibits a high initial Coulombic effciency of 90.1% and high reversible capacity (308.1 mAh g−1).
Intercalation‐based anode materials can be considered as the most promising anode candidates for large‐scale sodium‐ion batteries (SIBs), owing to their long‐term cycling stability and environmental ...friendliness, as well as their natural abundance. Nevertheless, their low energy density, low initial coulombic efficiency, and poor cycling lifespan, as well as sluggish sodium diffusion dynamics are still the main issues for the application of intercalation‐based anode materials in SIBs in terms of meeting the benchmark requirements for commercialization. Over the past few years, tremendous efforts have been devoted to improving the performance of SIBs. In this Review, recent progress in the development of intercalation‐based anode materials, including TiO2, Li4Ti5O12, Na2Ti3O7, and NaTi2(PO4)3, is summarized in terms of their sodium storage performance, critical issues, sodiation/desodiation behavior, and effective strategies to enhance their electrochemical performance. Additionally, challenges and perspectives are provided to further understand these intercalation‐based anode materials.
Happy Na‐ion: Sodium‐ion batteries (SIBs) are the most promising substitutes for lithium‐ion batteries in large‐scale energy storage, owing to their low cost, moderate energy density, and long lifespan. Among anode materials for SIBs, intercalation‐based anode materials, such as TiO2, Li4Ti5O12, Na2Ti3O7, and NaTi2(PO4)3, have significant advantages, such as low cost, stable cycling life, high safety, and environmental friendliness.
Hard carbon (HC) has the potential to be a viable commercial anode material in both lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) and sodium-ion batteries (SIBs). However, current battery performance evaluation ...methods based on half-cells are insufficient for accurately assessing the performance of HC anodes due to their ultra-low discharge voltage windows. To develop the next-generation of large-scale rechargeable batteries, it is necessary to examine reported HC materials from a full-cell perspective. This review emphasizes the importance of full-cell validation and provides a comprehensive overview of HC anodes - including their history, fundamentals, carbon chemistry induced by temperature, microstructure correlation with electrochemical performance, and debates surrounding lithium/sodium-ion storage mechanisms. Additionally, this review highlights various optimization strategies and suggests potential areas for future application of HC-based lithium-ion batteries (HC-LIBs) and HC-based sodium-ion batteries (HC-SIBs). Furthermore, different challenges and strategies that need to be addressed are presented in the hope of providing inspiration and guidance for the commercialization of HC anodes.
Hard carbon shows promise in LIBs and SIBs, but limited understanding and an incomplete assessment system hinder its progress. This review aims to raise awareness among researchers about these challenges.
Binders as a bridge in electrodes can bring various components together thus guaranteeing the integrity of electrodes and electronic contact during battery cycling. In this review, we summarize the ...recent progress of traditional binders and novel binders in the different electrodes of SIBs. The challenges faced by binders in terms of bond strength, wettability, thermal stability, conductivity, cost, and environment are also discussed in details. Correspondingly, the designing principle and advanced strategies of future research on SIB binders are also provided. Moreover, a general conclusion and perspective on the development of binder design for SIBs in the future are presented.
The challenges faced by binders can be addressed by enhancing the mechanical and chemical bonding strength, designing multifunctional integrated binders, and combining advanced characterization techniques.
Carbon nanospheres (CNSs) have attracted great interest in energy conversion and storage technologies due to their excellent chemical and thermal stability, high electrical conductivity and ...controllable size structure characteristics. In order to further improve the energy storage properties, many efforts have been made to design suitable nanocarbon spherical materials to improve electrochemical performance. In this overview, we summarize the recent research progress on CNSs, mainly focusing on the synthesis methods and their application as high-performance electrode materials in rechargeable batteries. As for the synthesis methods, hard template methods, soft template methods, the extension of the Stöber method, hydrothermal carbonization, aerosol-assisted synthesis are described in detail. In addition, the use of CNSs as electrodes in energy storage devices (mainly concentrated on lithium-ion batteries (LIBs)), sodium-ion batteries (SIBs) and potassium-ion batteries (PIBs) are also discussed in detail in this article. Finally, some perspectives on the future research and development of CNSs are provided.
This review summarizes the recent developments of CNSs synthesis and applications for rechargeable batteries, which could help researchers design high performance electrode materials for advanced batteries.
