Rechargeable batteries with high energy density, long cycle life, and low cost are considered key enablers for sustainable consumer electronics, electric vehicles (EVs), and smart grid energy storage. Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) have been emerged

batteries are currently the most powerful energy storage technology, particularly for powering mobile electronic devices and electric vehicles. [1][2][3] Improved Li-ion batteries and alternatives, such as Li-metal batteries, [4] Li-S batteries, [5] and solid-state batteries, [6] have the potential to effectively address current civilization challenges such as global warming, environmental pollution, and depletion of fossil fuel resources, paving the way to a sustainable future. To this end, academia and industry around the world are conducting intensive research into various ways to improve existing batteries or bring novel concepts into application. The development of advanced materials and electrodes is one of the most important steps in this process. [7][8][9][10] On a daily basis, reports of improved active materials or electrode architectures that significantly outperform established batteries are published in the scientific literature. However, the transfer of these innovations into practical application is rather rare. This may be due to difficulties in scaling the corresponding production routes to an industrially relevant level. Another possible reason is that promising performance metrics at the material level are not achieved in practical batteries, due to the different definition of performance parameters at the different technological levels, i.e., material, electrode, cell, system, etc.Various renowned scientists have already addressed these shortcomings in the presentation of performance data of new battery materials and electrodes in scientific literature [6,[11][12][13][14][15] and explicitly alert that extraordinary power claims for components used in batteries often do not hold up at the device level. These authors emphasize that reporting energy and power densities per weight of active material or electrode alone does not provide a realistic picture of the performance that an assembled device could achieve because it does not consider the weight of other necessary components. For example, it is well known that the rate capability scales with the electrode thickness. [16][17][18] Very thin electrodes (<20 µm) can be charged in a few minutes whereas thick electrodes (>100 µm) need several hours to achieve full capacity. When considering the specific capacity obtained at high rates in terms of mAh g -1 with respect to the mass of active material, the thin electrodes clearly outperform the thick ones. However, considering the power density Large-scale electrochemical energy storage is considered one of the crucial steps toward a sustainable energy economy. Science and industry worldwide are conducting intensive research into various ways to improve existing battery concepts or transferring novel concepts to application. The development of materials and electrodes is an essential step in this process. However, the evaluation of the achieved performance parameters and the comparison of the different studies at this technological level with regard to practical applications is challenging, since spec...

Although tin and tin oxides have been considered very promising anode materials for future high-energy lithium-ion batteries due to high theoretical capacity and low cost, the development of commercial anodes falls short of expectations. This is due to several challenging issues related to a massive volume expansion during operation. Nanostructured electrodes can accommodate the volume expansion but typically suffer from cumbersome synthesis routes and associated problems regarding scalability and cost efficiency, preventing their commercialization. Herein, a facile, easily scalable, and highly cost-efficient fabrication route is proposed based on electroplating and subsequent electrolytic oxidation of tin, resulting in additive-free tin oxide anodes for lithium-ion batteries. The electrodes prepared accordingly exhibit excellent performance in terms of gravimetric and volumetric capacity as well as promising cycle life and rate capability, making them suitable for future high-energy lithium-ion batteries.

No abstract

Antimony (Sb) and its oxides are considered to be promising materials for numerous applications, such as secondary batteries, catalysis, and thermoelectrics. Recent studies show that Sb/Sb2O3 composites can easily be prepared by electrochemical deposition. In the present work, the impact of process parameters, such as flow conditions, substrate roughness, and current‐potential modulations, on the properties of the Sb/Sb2O3 deposits are investigated. The deposits are characterized by electron microscopy including energy‐dispersive X‐ray spectroscopy analysis as well as X‐ray diffraction and Raman spectroscopy. The systematic investigations on the process parameters reveal that the size, morphology, and composition of the resulting Sb/Sb2O3 composites can be adjusted in a wide range. The insights of this parameter study imply a huge design freedom for the electrochemical formation of nanostructured Sb/Sb2O3 composites, allowing straightforward implementation of rational designs depending on a desired application.