Lithium and potassium storage behavior comparison for porous nanoflaked Co3O4 anode in lithium-ion and potassium-ion batteries

Solution combustion synthesis of a nanometer-scale Co3O4 anode material for Li-ion batteries

“…Interestingly, the specific surface area determined from BET measurements is about 3 m 2 ·g −1 , while the pore volume is found to be 0.02 cm 3 ·g −1 . These data are consistent with previously published works of Sahoo et al [ 51 ] and Wen et al [ 52 ]. Sahoo et al [ 51 ] found that the size of Co 3 O 4 materials synthesized through the SCS method increases, whereas its specific surface area decreases, with increasing process temperature.…”

“…They reported that temperatures over 600 °C led to the formation of a material with a specific surface area of around 3 m 2 •g −1 . Wen et al [52] produced, through the SCS process, the porous Co 3 O 4 nanoscale flakes with a specific surface area of 2.3 m 2 •g −1 and a pore volume of 0.02 cm 3 •g −1 . Moreover, the TEM measurements indicate that the Co 3 O 4 particles investigated in this work exhibit a compact structure rather than a porous one (Figure 2c).…”

“…Interestingly, the cyclability test performed at 100 mA•g −1 shows that the values of specific capacity consecutively rise over the theoretical capacity value and are maintained at 1060 mAh•g −1 after 100th cycle. This phenomenon is well known for different transition metal oxide electrodes and is usually ascribed to the reversible formation/dissolution of a gellike SEI layer, which provides some additional reversible capacity apart from the reversible conversion reactions occurring on the electrodes [4,15,17,19,21,24,26,29,34,37,40,52]. This additional lithium storage is often referred to as "pseudo capacitive" mechanism [25,29].…”

“…The first to fifth charge–discharge cycle profiles measured at a current density of 100 mA·g −1 are shown in Figure 3a . During the first discharge, the profile consists of one long plateau at around 1.0 V, corresponding to the formation of metallic cobalt and Li 2 O according to the reversible conversion reaction stated before ( Equation 1 ), and a gradual continuous voltage slope down to 0.01 V, corresponding to electrolyte decomposition and the resulting formation of a solid–electrolyte interface (SEI) layer [ 14 – 15 19 – 21 26 , 28 – 31 34 – 41 52 ]. In turn, the following discharge profiles slightly differ from the initial one.…”

“…The SCS method has been successfully used to produce spinelstructured Co 3 O 4 nanomaterials [48][49][50][51][52]. Taking advantage of these reports, we decided to design a new SCS synthesis path in which we applied for the first time ᴅ-(+)-glucose as the reducing agent instead of the previously used urea [48,49,51] and citric acid [50,52]. ᴅ-(+)-glucose has been used as alternative fuel for the SCS process mainly for two reasons.…”