15 June 2022
The Battery Storage and Grid Integration Program’s battery materials team from the ANU Research School of Chemistry joined forces with the Munster Electrochemical Energy Technology (MEET) Centre to assess a new variety of dual-ion battery that utilises negative electrode materials containing black phosphorus.
Dual-ion batteries are based on using both lithium ions and negative ions present in the electrolyte for the energy storage process. Most commonly graphite is used as both negative and positive electrode material. Dr Thrinathreddy Ramireddy, Associate Professor Alexey Glushenkov and their German colleagues Dr Tobias Placke, Jens Wrogemann and Lukas Haneke, along with Deakin University researchers Dr Irin Sultana and Professor Ying Ian Chen, have incorporated black phosphorus into the negative electrodes of these dual-ion batteries with the aim to replace graphite.
The phosphorus-containing electrodes are able to deliver an enhanced capacity (~800 mAh g-1) vs a typical graphite capacity (~350 mAh g-1) in the negative electrodes due to their different alloying mechanism. Using a highly concentrated electrolyte, full cell batteries were developed with phosphorus-based negative electrodes and were evaluated versus standard graphite – graphite dual-ion batteries as a benchmark. A phosphorus containing cell with a limit voltage of 4.3 V has a better cyclic stability than a graphite-graphite cell, while the phosphorus containing cell with a limit voltage of 4.7 V has a higher specific capacity and can achieve specific energy of 319 Wh kg-1 (per total mass of two electrodes) or 155 Wh kg-1 (per mass of electrodes and active salt), both improved metrics over graphite-graphite cells. Further development will allow these phosphorus-based dual-ion cells to combine a high specific energy with good cyclic stability.
The outcomes of the study were published in Advanced Science, an international peer-reviewed journal by Wiley.