Despite efforts to stabilize sodium metal anodes and prevent dendrite formation, achieving long cycle life with high areal capacities remains difficult owing to a combination of complex failure modes that involve retardant uneven sodium nucleation and subsequent dendrite formation. Now, a sodiophilic interphase based on oxygen-functionalized carbon nanotube networks is presented, which concurrently facilitates a homogeneous sodium nucleation and a dendrite-free, lateral growth behavior upon recurring sodium plating/stripping processes. This sodiophilic interphase renders sodium anodes with an ultrahigh capacity of 1078 mAh g-1 (areal capacity of 10 mAh cm-2 ), approaching the theoretical capacity of 1166 mAh g-1 of pure sodium, as well as a long cycle life up to 3000 cycles. Implementation of this anode allows for the construction of a sodium-air battery with largely enhanced cycling performance owing to the oxygen functionalization-mediated, dendrite-free sodium morphology.
Keywords: carbon nanotubes; oxygen functionalization; sodiophilicity; sodium anodes; sodium-air batteries.
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