Wednesday, 16 October 2019
Grand Ballroom (The Hilton Atlanta)
Secondary batteries have wide applications ranging from portable electronics to hybrid electric vehicles owing to increasing demand around the world for higher capacity and longer life. In this regard, metal-based anodes (Sb, Sn, etc.) are considered the material of choice, offering higher gravimetric capacity albeit with rapid fade, owing to detachment of the active material from the current collector associated with volumetric strain during repeated galvanostatic cycling. In the present work, we successfully demonstrate that reduced graphene oxide anchored nanocrystalline antimony particles (Sb/RGO) based sodium-ion batteries (SIBs) anode affords a stable capacity for 100 cycles with minimum capacity fade (~1.1%) by varying the RGO content. The optimum RGO content (~15 wt.%) is able to withstand the severe volumetric strain of SbNPs during sodium-ion alloying/de-alloying reactions and thereby prevents the detachment of Sb particles from the current collector. The improved electrochemical performance of optimal RGO anchored SbNPs manly stems from the lower electrochemical charge transfer resistance (Rct) and accommodation of volumetric strains of Sb during cycling by RGO matrix. The optimal Sb/RGO anode exhibits excellent capacity (average discharge and charge capacity of ~374.8 mAhg-1 and ~366.9 mAhg-1, respectively from 1st to 100th cycle) and Coulombic efficiency (~98.8% from 1st to 100th cycle) with excellent capacity retention of ~74.8%. Among the Sb/RGO composite anodes, the anode (Sb/RGO-15wt%) with appropriate RGO content achieves an impressive reversible capacity of ~347.1 mAhg-1 after 100 cycles at a constant current rate of 100 mAg-1 and the rate capability of ~331.9, ~320.4, ~312.3, ~307.8, ~291.5, ~280.3, ~258.1, ~235.5, and ~339.7 mAhg-1 at, 0.2 Ag-1, 0.3 Ag-1, 0.4 Ag-1, 0.5 Ag-1, 0.75 Ag-1, 1 Ag-1, 1.5 Ag-1, 2 Ag-1, and 0.1 Ag-1 current rate, respectively.


