An ultrastable sodium-ion battery anode enabled by carbon-coated porous NaTi2(PO4)3 olive-like nanospheres

Yuehua Man; Jianlu Sun; Xuwen Zhao; Liping Duan; Yating Fei; Jianchun Bao; Xiangyin Mo; Xiaosi Zhou

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2022.12.155

An ultrastable sodium-ion battery anode enabled by carbon-coated porous NaTi₂(PO₄)₃ olive-like nanospheres

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2023 Apr:635:417-426. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2022.12.155. Epub 2022 Dec 30.

Authors

Yuehua Man¹, Jianlu Sun¹, Xuwen Zhao², Liping Duan¹, Yating Fei¹, Jianchun Bao¹, Xiangyin Mo³, Xiaosi Zhou⁴

Affiliations

¹ School of Chemistry and Materials Science, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing 210023, China.
² Department of Materials Science and Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon 999077 Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
³ School of Chemistry and Materials Science, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing 210023, China. Electronic address: moxiangyin@njnu.edu.cn.
⁴ School of Chemistry and Materials Science, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing 210023, China. Electronic address: zhouxiaosi@njnu.edu.cn.

PMID: 36599240
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2022.12.155

Abstract

NaTi₂(PO₄)₃ (NTP) is a promising anode material for sodium-ion batteries (SIBs). It has drawn wide attention because of its stable three-dimensional NASICON-type structure, proper redox potential, and large accommodation space for Na⁺. However, the inherent low electronic conductivity of the phosphate framework reduces its charge transfer kinetics, thus limiting its exploitation. Therefore, this paper proposes a material with carbon-coated porous NTP olive-like nanospheres (p-NTP@C) to tackle the issues above. Based on experimental data and theoretical calculations, the porous structure of the material is found to be able to provide more active sites and shorten the Na⁺ diffusion distance. In addition, the carbon coating can effectively improve the electron and Na⁺ diffusion kinetics. As the anode material for SIBs, the p-NTP@C olive-like nanospheres exhibit a high reversible capacity (127.3 mAh g^-1 at 0.1 C) and ultrastable cycling performance (84.8% capacity retention after 10,000 cycles at 5 C). Furthermore, the sodium-ion full cells, composed of p-NTP@C anode and Na₃V₂(PO₄)₂F₃@carbon cathode, also deliver excellent performance (75.7% capacity retention after 1000 cycles at 1 C). In brief, this nanostructure design provides a viable approach for the future development of long-life and highly stable NASICON-type anode materials.

Keywords: Anode; Carbon coating; NaTi(2)(PO(4))(3); Porous structure; Sodium-ion battery.