Recent Progress of Promising Cathode Candidates for Sodium‐Ion Batteries: Current Issues, Strategy, Challenge, and Prospects

Abstract

Lithium‐ion batteries (LIBs) have dominated the secondary batteries market in the past few decades. However, their widespread application is seriously hampered by the limited lithium resource and high cost. Recently, sodium‐ion batteries (SIBs) have generated significant attention because of their characteristics of abundant raw sources, low cost, and similar “rocking chair” mechanism with LIBs, which hold great application potential in large‐scale energy storage. Cathode materials with excellent electrochemical performance are in urgent demand for next‐generation SIBs. Herein, this review provides a comprehensive overview of the recent advances of the most promising SIBs cathode candidates, including layered oxides, polyanionic materials, and Prussian blue analogues. The currently existing issues that need to be addressed for these cathodes are pointed out, such as insufficient energy density, low electron conductivity, air sensitivity, and so on. This review also details the structural characteristics of these three cathode candidates. Moreover, the recent optimization strategies for improving the electrochemical performance are summarized, including element doping, morphology modification, structure architecture, and so on. Finally, the current research status and proposed future developmental directions of these three cathode materials are concluded. This review aims to provide practical guidance for the development of cathode materials for next‐generation SIBs.

Recent advances in two-dimensional polymers: synthesis, assembly and energy-related applications

“…SIBs have similar working principles and energy storage mechanisms to LIBs, which exhibit better power characteristics, wide temperature range adaptability, and excellent safety performance. 107,214 In addition, sodium resources are abundant, inexpensive and environmentally friendly, so SIBs are expected to be used in large-scale and low-cost energy storage devices. 215 However, since the radius of sodium ion is larger than that of lithium ion, the removal and embedding process of sodium ion is easy to destroy the structure of the electrode material.…”

Routes to high-performance layered oxide cathodes for sodium-ion batteries

“…Nevertheless, layered oxide cathodes are prone to severe irreversible phase transitions in the high charge state, resulting in a deteriorated performance. [134][135][136] (3) Poor air stability: most sodium-based materials, especially layered oxide cathode materials, exhibit poor air stability. Exposure to air leads to the hygroscopic degradation of their structure, thereby considerably increasing the challenges of manufacturing and transporting electrodes composed of these materials.…”

“…Nevertheless, layered oxide cathodes are prone to severe irreversible phase transitions in the high charge state, resulting in a deteriorated performance. 134–136…”

Empowering Energy Storage Technology: Recent Breakthroughs and Advancement in Sodium-Ion Batteries

“…48,49 For the commercial prospect, cathode materials play the most significant role, such as layered cathode materials deliver high specific capacity, polyanionic cathode materials result in high cycling performance, and PBA cathode materials deliver low cost SIBs. 50 Thus, the above discussion states that various types of SIB cathode materials exhibit several advantages along with some disadvantages as well (Table 2). However, recent advancements have led to overcoming some issues with SIB cathodes and resulted in enhanced electrochemical performance (Table 3).…”