Wednesday, 16 May 2018
Ballroom 6ABC (Washington State Convention Center)
Aqueous rechargeable batteries (ARBs) represent one of the most promising solutions for stationary energy storage, owing to their intrinsic low cost, high safety and environmental friendliness. To date, most attention has been paid to metal cations as charge carriers, such as Li+, Na+, K+, Mg2+, Zn2+ etc.; however, non-metal cations like hydronium (H3O+) and ammonium (NH4+) ions received rare attention from the battery community. In this work, we revealed the unique intercalation chemistry of NH4+ ions in Prussian blue analogues (PBAs), and proposed a “rocking-chair” NH4+-ion battery in full cell configuration. Comparative studies showed that Berlin green Fe[Fe(CN)6] lattice could demonstrate the highest reaction potential, lowest structural strain and best cycling performance for NH4+ intercalation than Na+ and K+ ions. We then prepared an ammonium-containing Prussian white analogue, (NH4)2Ni[Fe(CN)6], by a facile ion-exchange method. When coupled with an organic solid, perylenetetracarboxylic diimide (PTCDI), this aqueous NH4+-ion full cell can deliver a working voltage of ~1.0 V, an energy density of ~43 Wh kg-1 and impressive cycling performance of 1000 cycles. These results may open a new avenue for NH4+-based energy storage applications.