Proceedings of MATSUS Spring 2024 Conference (MATSUS24)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.29363/nanoge.matsus.2024.410
Publication date: 18th December 2023
The current strong interest in electromotive mobility and the need to transition to an energy grid with sustainable storage devices has led to a renewed interest in sodium ion batteries (SIBs). Amorphous disordered carbons such as hard carbons (HCs) are promising candidates for high-capacity negative electrode materials in SIBs. Their high capacities, however, are often accompanied with high irreversible capacity losses during the initial cycles,[1] while low initial losses are accompanied with moderate capacities.[2] In our research we are aiming morphologically and chemically functional carbons. Morphologically, our target is a local separation of reversible sodium storage and irreversible losses in novel synthetic carbon anodes, using a core-shell concept. On chemical side, we aim at ion-binding functional groups.
We investigated different methods to obtain core-shell structures to restrict SEI formation to the external particle surface, while leveraging the Na storage potential of porous carbon core materials. Moreover, we apply active-site imprinting to realise disting ion-binding features into the core carbons. The electrochemical performance of those materials can be rather easily altered upon removing/exchanging the ions bound to the functional group. Herein, we will focus on the synthesis of zeolitic imidazolate framework (ZIF) based NDCs. Different analytical methods, e.g., physisorption (N2, Ar, CO2), XPS, XAS, and NMR, will be used to understand the alteration of morphological and chemical features upon ion exchange.