Microsized Sn particles as advanced anodes for Na-ion batteries Xiaoqiong Du 1 , Biao Zhang 2 and Valeria Nicolosi 1 1 School of Chemistry, Centre for Research on Adaptive Nanostructures and Nanodevices (CRANN) & Advanced Materials Bio-Engineering Research Centre (AMBER), Trinity College Dublin, Dublin D02PN40, Ireland, 2 Department of Applied Physics, Research Institute for Smart Energy, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong 000000, P.R. China Na-ion batteries (NIBs) have emerged as attractive alternatives to Li-ion batteries (LIBs) for large-scale energy storage thanks to the Na abundance and sustainability. In NIBs, hard carbon materials are the most widely adopted anodes delivering a typical capacity of about 300 mAh g –1 , which is much lower than the practical capacity of graphite anodes in LIBs. Compared with hard carbon, Sn anodes are of particular interest because of the high theoretical capacity of 847 mAh g –1 and appropriate potential ( ∼ 0.20 V vs Na + /Na), but their applications are afflicted by severe structural degradation because of the fast capacity degradation. Although nanostructure design can partially resolve this issue, it brings out other problems, such as high manufacturing costs, large initial irreversible capacities and decreases in density and capacity. Microsized active particles present many advantages over nanosized particles, like the low surface area, high tap density and facile production. However, microsized Sn is more difficult to be stabilized than the nanosized analogue; this is due to the fact that microsized Sn suffers from significant volume change (up to 420%) during the sodiation process. To resolve this stability issue, we designed devices with microsized Sn and ether-based electrolytes. This enables ultra-stable cycling of Sn electrodes in NIBs. The Sn microparticled electrodes show stable cycling performances over 1000 cycles. Such improvement in stability could be attributed to the formation of thin, yet strong, solid electrolyte interphase (SEIs) in ether-based electrolytes. The SEIs have low crystallinity and are uniformly distributed among the organic matrix, which can accommodate the deformation of the particles upon sodiation and de-sodiation. The results presented here indicate the great opportunity in using microsized active particles in NIBs. References 1. J. Huang, X. Guo, X. Du, X. Lin, J.-Q. Huang, H. Tan, Y. Zhu and B. Zhang, Energy Environ. Sci ., 2019, 12 , 1550-1557. 2. X. Du, Y. Gao, Z. Hou, X. Guo, Y. Zhu and B. Zhang, ACS Appl. Energy Mater ., 2022, 5 , 2252-2259.
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