They published their work on Mar. 15th in Energy Material Advances.
"The development of cost-effective and high-performance RP anode materials for LIBs/SIBs is imperative," said paper author Hailei Zhao, professor with the Beijing Key Lab of New Energy Materials and Technology, School of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, "Despite RP shows a great potential, the inherent poor electrical conductivity of RP (~10-14 S cm-1) and significant volume changes during charge/discharge processes (> 300%) compromise its cycling stability."
Zhao explained that the poor electrical conductivity and significant volume changes of RP cause substantial electrode polarization, sluggish reaction kinetics, severe electrode pulverization and thus a rapid decay in electrochemical performance.
"Based on these understandings, a great deal of efforts has been dedicated to optimize the RP-based electrode, enhance its electrochemical performance, and facilitate its commercialization." Zhao said.
In a similar approach to other electrode materials with low conductivity and large volume changes, the introduction of functional material with excellent electrical conductivity and mechanical properties is considered a feasible solution to establish a conductive network and provide adequate buffering and protection. This measure is equally effective for RP to construct a stable electrode, but there still have several issues remain to be solved. Zhao and her team reviewed the latest work and outlined main challenges of RP anodes with the corresponding solutions.
"These issues include: (1) the large particle size and limited reactivity of RP, (2) poor intrinsic electrical conductivity and huge volume changes with guest ion insertion/extraction, (3) undesired interfacial instability, (4) chemical stability and oxidation issues, (5) a low mass ratio of RP in working batteries," Zhao said. "These issues are important but easily overlooked. To advance this, we also assess the impact of these aspects on electrode's performance, pros and cons of various strategies to solve these problems."
"We also discusses the future prospects of RP for LIBs/SIBs and aims to provide a different perspective on the challenges that must be overcome to fully exploit the potential of RP and meet commercial application requirements."
Other contributors include Jin Bai, Zhaolin Li, School of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing; Xinran Wang, Chuan Wu, Beijing Key Laboratory of Environmental Science and Engineering, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, and Yangtze Delta Region Academy of Beijing Institute of Technology, Jiaxing; Konrad Świerczek, Faculty of Energy and Fuels, AGH University of Krakow, Krakow, Poland.
This work was financially supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (52074023), Beijing Natural Science Foundation (2222062) and National Key R&D Program of China (2023YFE0119500).
