A High Voltage Sodium Ion Battery Based on Low-Cost Sodium Iron Sulfate Cathode Material

Wednesday, 16 October 2019
Grand Ballroom (The Hilton Atlanta)
S. Li, J. Zhao, and L. Gao (Soochow University)
It is desirable to develop alternative electrochemical devices with comparable performance but lower cost to substitute for lithium-ion batteries. Sodium-ion batteries show very similar electrochemical mechanism to lithium-ion batteries. The abundant sodium resource can considerably reduce the cost of energy storage devices as compared with lithium-ion batteries. In this work, a new derivative of sodium iron sulfates, Na6Fe5(SO4)8 (NFS), is developed as cathode material for sodium-ion batteries. The NFS is synthesized from sodium carbonate, sodium sulfate and iron sulfate raw materials, and it shows a high working voltage of 3.7 V vs. Na+/Na. When combined with carbon nanotube (CNT), the NSF@CNT composite demonstrates increased electronic conductivity and superior electrochemical performance. A 3.6 V sodium-ion full battery is constructed based on NFS@CNT cathode and hard carbon (HC) anode materials. Such a full NFS@CNT//HC cell can deliver an energy density towards 350 Wh kg-1 and cycling stability over prolonged 1000 cycles at 2 C. This work offers a low-cost sodium-ion full battery with an impressive high working voltage and energy/power densities for possible stationary energy storage applications.