Galvanic Replacement Synthesis of Highly Uniform Sb Nanotubes: Reaction Mechanism and Enhanced Sodium Storage Performance

Yan Liu; Bin Zhou; Sheng Liu; Qingshan Ma; Wen-Hua Zhang

doi:10.1021/acsnano.9b01660

Galvanic Replacement Synthesis of Highly Uniform Sb Nanotubes: Reaction Mechanism and Enhanced Sodium Storage Performance

ACS Nano. 2019 May 28;13(5):5885-5892. doi: 10.1021/acsnano.9b01660. Epub 2019 May 9.

Authors

Yan Liu¹, Bin Zhou¹, Sheng Liu¹, Qingshan Ma¹, Wen-Hua Zhang¹

Affiliation

¹ Sichuan Research Center of New Materials , Institute of Chemical Materials, China Academy of Engineering Physics , Chengdu 610200 , China.

PMID: 31063350
DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.9b01660

Abstract

One-dimensional nanotubes are very useful for achieving excellent performance in lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) and sodium-ion batteries (SIBs) due to the fact that tubular structures can effectively alleviate the structural strain and shorten the ion diffusion length during repeated cycling. In this work, we report a Cu₂Sb-mediated growth strategy to controllably fabricate highly uniform Sb nanotubes (NTs), as well as Cu@Cu₂Sb and Cu₂Sb@Sb composite NTs, via a facile galvanic replacement reaction using Cu nanowires (NWs) as sacrificial templates. Benefiting from their structural merits, the Sb NTs manifest excellent sodium storage performance with superior rate performance (286 mAh g^-1 at 10 A g^-1) and extraordinary cycling stability (342 mAh g^-1 after 6000 cycles at 1 A g^-1). Furthermore, a full cell with Sb NTs as anode and Na₃(VOPO₄)₂F as cathode exhibits a high energy density (252 Wh kg^-1) and high output voltage (2.7 V), revealing their significant application promise in the next-generation SIBs.

Keywords: CuSb; anode materials; antimony; galvanic replacement reaction; nanotubes; sodium-ion batteries.