Leveraging impurities in recycled lead anodes for sodium-ion batteries

Biomimetic-Mineralization-Assisted Self-Activation Creates a Delicate Porous Structure in Carbon Material for High-Rate Sodium Storage

“…1−4 Therefore, SIBs gradually serve as an important supplement to LIBs while replacing lead-acid batteries. 5,6 However, commonly used anode materials lose their advantage in SIBs due to the larger radius of Na + (0.102 nm) than Li + (0.076 nm); 7,8 especially, commercial graphite fails to insert Na + in carbonate ester-based electrolytes. 2,9,10 As a substitute of graphite, hard carbons suit Na + storage due to their distorted graphene layers, large interlayer spacing, and open/closed pores.…”

“…Because of the similar energy storage mechanisms with lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), sodium-ion batteries (SIBs) can not only meet the requirements of low cost, long cycle-life, and high stability/safety in the market of electrochemical energy storage, but also alleviate the limited development of LIBs to some extent, which is caused by the shortage of lithium resources. − Therefore, SIBs gradually serve as an important supplement to LIBs while replacing lead-acid batteries. , However, commonly used anode materials lose their advantage in SIBs due to the larger radius of Na + (0.102 nm) than Li + (0.076 nm); , especially, commercial graphite fails to insert Na + in carbonate ester-based electrolytes. ,, As a substitute of graphite, hard carbons suit Na + storage due to their distorted graphene layers, large interlayer spacing, and open/closed pores. , Yet, hard carbons usually deliver an inferior reversible capacity (∼300 mAh g –1 ) with poor high-rate capability (≤2 A g –1 ), because of the low diffusion coefficient of Na + (8.88 × 10 –7 cm 2 s –1 ) in carbonate ester-based electrolytes. ,,, Porous carbons have merits of high specific surface area (SSA), expanded interlayer distance, hierarchical pores, heteroatoms doping, and plentiful defects, which pave the way for obtaining high-rate-capability SIBs through increases in the physisorption/chemisorption for high capacitive capacity (fast Na + storage kinetics). − Nevertheless, porous carbons suffer from the conventional preparation strategies: physical/chemical activation creates rich pores but with irregular structure; artificial templates can obtain regular structure but with difficult post-purification. , As a result, there is an urgent need to develop novel synthetic methods of carbon-based anodes with delicate structural regulation and demonstrate their feasibility for high-performance practical SIBs.…”