Dendrite-Free Sodium-Metal Anodes for High-Energy Sodium-Metal Batteries

Bing Sun; Peng Li; Jinqiang Zhang; Dan Wang; Paul Munroe; Chengyin Wang; Peter H L Notten; Guoxiu Wang

doi:10.1002/adma.201801334

Dendrite-Free Sodium-Metal Anodes for High-Energy Sodium-Metal Batteries

Adv Mater. 2018 May 31:e1801334. doi: 10.1002/adma.201801334. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Bing Sun¹, Peng Li², Jinqiang Zhang¹, Dan Wang³, Paul Munroe⁴, Chengyin Wang⁵, Peter H L Notten^{1

6

7}, Guoxiu Wang¹

Affiliations

¹ Centre for Clean Energy Technology, University of Technology Sydney, Broadway, Sydney, NSW, 2007, Australia.
² College of Materials Science and Technology, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing, Jiangsu, 210016, China.
³ State Key Laboratory of Biochemical Engineering, Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 1 BeiErjie, Zhong Guancun, Beijing, 100190, China.
⁴ School of Materials Science and Engineering, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, 2052, Australia.
⁵ College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Yangzhou University, 180 Si-Wang-Ting Road, Yangzhou, 225002, China.
⁶ Department of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry, Eindhoven University of Technology, 5600, MB, Eindhoven, The Netherlands.
⁷ Fundamental Electrochemistry (IEK9), Forschungszentrum Jülich, D-52425, Jülich, Germany.

PMID: 29855109
DOI: 10.1002/adma.201801334

Abstract

Sodium (Na) metal is one of the most promising electrode materials for next-generation low-cost rechargeable batteries. However, the challenges caused by dendrite growth on Na metal anodes restrict practical applications of rechargeable Na metal batteries. Herein, a nitrogen and sulfur co-doped carbon nanotube (NSCNT) paper is used as the interlayer to control Na nucleation behavior and suppress the Na dendrite growth. The N- and S-containing functional groups on the carbon nanotubes induce the NSCNTs to be highly "sodiophilic," which can guide the initial Na nucleation and direct Na to distribute uniformly on the NSCNT paper. As a result, the Na-metal-based anode (Na/NSCNT anode) exhibits a dendrite-free morphology during repeated Na plating and striping and excellent cycling stability. As a proof of concept, it is also demonstrated that the electrochemical performance of sodium-oxygen (Na-O₂ ) batteries using the Na/NSCNT anodes show significantly improved cycling performances compared with Na-O₂ batteries with bare Na metal anodes. This work opens a new avenue for the development of next-generation high-energy-density sodium-metal batteries.

Keywords: dendrites; nucleation and growth; sodium-metal anodes; sodium-oxygen batteries.