Potassium Dual-Ion Hybrid Batteries with Ultrahigh Rate Performance and Excellent Cycling Stability

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2018 Dec 12;10(49):42294-42300. doi: 10.1021/acsami.8b15193. Epub 2018 Nov 29.

Abstract

Potassium-ion batteries (KIBs) are regarded as a potential alternative battery technology to conventional lithium-ion batteries owing to their low potential, natural abundance, and the low cost of potassium. However, sluggish reaction kinetic of the much larger K+ ions leads to low rate capability and poor cycling performance of KIBs, restricting KIB's practical applications. Herein, we propose a novel full battery called a potassium dual-ion hybrid battery (KDHB) by employing an absorption-type hierarchical porous carbon as the anode material and an anion intercalation-type expanded graphite (EG) as the cathode material. Owing to the hybrid mechanism of the battery and capacitive reaction, the KDHB exhibits superior rate performance with a high capacity of 82 mA h g-1 even at a high current density of 3 A g-1 with negligible capacity decay. Moreover, the KDHB exhibits excellent cycling performance with 74.2% capacity retention after 2000 cycles at 1 A g-1, which is so far the best performance of the reported KDIBs.

Keywords: capacitive anode; dual-ion hybrid battery; graphite cathode; hierarchical porous carbon; potassium-ion electrolyte.