High-Performance Quasi-Solid-State MXene-Based Li-I Batteries

Xiao Tang; Dong Zhou; Peng Li; Xin Guo; Chengyin Wang; Feiyu Kang; Baohua Li; Guoxiu Wang

doi:10.1021/acscentsci.8b00921

High-Performance Quasi-Solid-State MXene-Based Li-I Batteries

ACS Cent Sci. 2019 Feb 27;5(2):365-373. doi: 10.1021/acscentsci.8b00921. Epub 2019 Feb 1.

Authors

Xiao Tang¹, Dong Zhou¹, Peng Li², Xin Guo¹, Chengyin Wang³, Feiyu Kang⁴, Baohua Li⁴, Guoxiu Wang¹

Affiliations

¹ Centre for Clean Energy Technology, Faculty of Science, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales 2007, Australia.
² College of Material Science and Engineering, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing 210006, P. R. China.
³ College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Yangzhou University, Yangzhou 225002, P. R. China.
⁴ Key Laboratory of Thermal Management Engineering and Materials, Graduate School at Shenzhen, Tsinghua University, Shenzhen 518055, P. R. China.

Abstract

Lithium-iodine (Li-I) batteries have attracted tremendous attention due to their high energy and power densities as well as the low cost of iodine. However, the severe shuttle effect of iodine species and the uncontrollable lithium dendrite growth have strongly hindered their practical applications. Here we successfully develop a quasi-solid-state Li-I battery enabled by a MXene-based iodine cathode and a composite polymer electrolyte (CPE) containing NaNO₃ particles dispersing in a pentaerythritol-tetraacrylate-based (PETEA-based) gel polymer electrolyte. As verified by experimental characterizations and first-principle calculations, the abundant functional groups on the surface of MXene sheets provide strong chemical binding to iodine species, and therefore immobilize their shuttling. The PETEA-based polymer matrix simultaneously suppresses the diffusion of iodine species and stabilizes the Li anode/CPE interface against dendrite growth. The NaNO₃ particles act as an effective catalyst to facilitate the transformation kinetics of LiI₃ on the cathode. Owing to such synergistic optimization, the as-developed Li-I batteries deliver high energy/power density with long cycling stability and good flexibility. This work opens up a new avenue to improve the performance of Li-I batteries.