New Type Of Potassium Ion Battery Has Been Developed With Porous Antimony

Potassium ion battery is a rechargeable battery. It is one of the candidates for replacing high-cost commercial lithium-ion batteries because of its rich potassium reserves and low standard potential. In fact, as early as a few years ago, potassium-ion batteries have also experienced low valleys. As a secondary battery energy storage system, potassium-ion batteries have achieved great success in the fields of electric vehicles and portable electronic devices.

The development of Lithium-ion battery

Lithium-ion batteries were first developed in 1990 by Sony Corporation of Japan, in which the lithium ions are inserted into carbon (petroleum coke and graphite) to form negative electrode (lithium or lithium alloys for conventional lithium batteries). LixCoO₂, LixNiO₂, and LixMnO₄ are commonly used as the positive electrode material, and LiPF₆ + diethylene carbonate (EC) + dimethyl carbonate (DMC) for the electrolyte.

At present, the main factor limiting the continuous development of lithium-ion battery technology is that the reserves of lithium resources, which is small and unevenly distributed in the crust. As the consumption of lithium-ion batteries continues to increase, the price of lithium resources is also rising, which limit its use in large energy storage systems.

Porous antimony for lithium ion batteries

The antimony anode material has a high theoretical specific capacity and can be used in a high performance potassium ion battery. Recently, Professor Feng Jinkui from Shandong University used the technology of vacuum de-alloying to prepare porous metal, which solved the problem of preparation of porous antimony.

Advantages of porous antimony

Researchers used two metals with similar melting points to prepare porous antimony. The prepared porous antimony has the advantages of suitable pore diameter, high purity, adjustable porosity, environmental protection, and large-scale production, etc. The porosity of the porous antimony can be regulated by temperature and precursor components, and by-products can also be recycled. When using porous antimony for the anode material of potassium ion battery, it exhibits improved electrochemical performance because the porous antimony can alleviate the volume expansion generated during the cycle and increase the charge transfer rate.

It can be used in high performance potassium ion batteries, which further proves that vacuum de-alloying technology has great application potential.

The optimized porous antimony was characterized, and the results showed that the pore size and particle size were both nanometer-scale and had a high specific surface. Electrochemical performance tests have shown that optimized porous antimony has improved cycle performance and rate performance compared to commercial antimony particles.

Related links: T3P

Edited by Suzhou Yacoo Science Co., Ltd.