Chapter 1
Carbon Anode Materials for Sodium-Ion Batteries
Hongshuai Hou1,2 and Xiaobo Ji1,2*
1College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Central South University, Changsha, China
2State Key Laboratory of Powder Metallurgy, Central South University, Changsha, China
Abstract
A rechargeable ion battery is a kind of high-efficiency energy storage and conversion system. Lithium-ion battery (LIB) has been widely applied to lots of fields since it was commercialized in the 1990s, including various electronic products and electric vehicles. With the fast development of electronic products and electric vehicles, the market demand of LIB has dramatically expanded, while the lithium resource is not rich on the earth, which will inevitably lead to the rise of LIB cost, limiting the large-scale application of LIBs. Although the sodium-ion battery (SIB) with the similar working principle as LIBs was ignored after the commercialization of LIBs, it has attracted attention again due to the abundant sodium resource, and now it is often considered as the promising alternative for LIBs. One of the main limiting factors for the development of SIBs is the absence of proper anode materials, but in recent years, important progress on the anode materials have been made. Among lots of reported anode materials for SIBs, carbon material may be one of the most attractive candidates owing to abundant resource, low cost, good stability, nontoxicity, and high safety. A variety of carbonaceous materials have been evaluted as sodium storage anodes, involving graphite, graphene and amorphous carbon materials. In comparison with the graphitized carbon materials, the amorphous carbon materials exhibited better electrochemical performances due to the multiple sodium storage modes, including adsorption, intercalation nanopores filling. To further improve the electrochemical sodium storage properties, micro/nanostructure design and heteroatoms-doping was conducted. In consideration of the resource and sustainability, a large number of biomass derived carbon anode materials were developed. For the sodium storage mechanism of hard carbons, there are conflicting opinions regarding the assignment of Na+ storage mode at different voltage regions. Although some important achievements have been made, the disadvantageous points are still to be solved, like low initial Coulomb efficiency, poor rate capability and relatively high manufacturing cost. In this chapter, the recent progress of the carbonaceous anode materials is summarized and discussed, including the sodium storage performances of graphite/graphene-based carbons, amormphous carbons, heteroatoms-doped carbons, biomass derived carbons, and the corresponding sodium storage mechanism. In addition, the current critical issues, challenges and perspectives of carbon anode materials for SIBs are discussed as well. We really wish that this chapter can help readers to understand the carbonaceous anode materials in SIBs.
Keywords: Energy storage, sodium-ion battery, sodium storage, anode, carbon material, sodium storage mechanism
1.1 Introduction
Energy is the base of human existence and the development of human society is highly dependent on the emergence of high-quality energy and the application of advanced energy technology. For thousands of years, people obtained energy from natural world to survive and reproduce. Nowadays, the progress of energy, especially clean energy, is one of the hottest topics concerned by the people all over the world. In the past several decades, the over-exploitation and utilization of fossil fuel, leading to rapid exhaustion of fossil fuel resources and emerging environmental problems. Employing novel renewable and clean energy sources to substitute for the fossil fuel is highly desired. The wind energy, tidal energy, geothermal energy, hydroenergy, and solar energy are growing rapidly; nevertheless, they are all intermittent. To realize the integration of these renewable energies into the electrical grid, building the large-scale energy storage system (ESS) is vital to the operation of peak shift [1].
Among a variety of energy storage technologies, electrochemical secondary battery is a promising large-scale electricity storage device due to high energy conversion efficiency, flexibility, and simple maintenance [1–3]. The rechargeable alkali metal-ion battery, like lithium-ion battery (LIB) and sodium-ion battery (SIB), were proposed in 1970–1980s. And the LIB was successfully commercialized in 1991 by Sony, and then lots of studies were focused on the LIBs. On the contrary, SIBs were left out and bare related investigations were reported for three decades. In recent years, the flourishing development of various electric-equipment, including multifarious consumer electronics, electric tools and electric vehicles, largely increased the market demand of LIBs. Unfortunately, the lithium is not an abundant element, the lithium resource reserve is only 20 ppm in the earth cluster [2, 3], and this would seriously limit the supply of LIBs. On account of this, now the SIB attracts more and more attenti...
