A nanostructured material has been used as an anode in a sodium ion battery for the first time and its performance is better than all carbon materials tested so far, say researchers from Germany.
With the increasing demand for large scale stationary storage systems, cheap sodium-based systems have become attractive. Graphite, the standard anode material in lithium ion batteries is not suitable for a sodium-based system because sodium cannot be inserted between graphite layers. Instead, the team have made a porous carbon material to capture the sodium. The resulting material has excellent rate capability at room temperature, says the team.
Read the Energy & Environmental Science article today:
Room-temperature Sodium-ion batteries: Improving the rate capability of carbon anode materials by templating strategies
S Wenzel, T Hara, J Janek and P Adelhelm, Energy Environ. Sci., 2011
DOI: 10.1039/c1ee01744f
