Synthesis of low vacancies PB with high electrochemical performance using a facile method

ABSTRACT

The introduction of electric vehicles (EVs) into the automotive market has boosted the advancement of energy storage technology. Although lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) could provide a solution to the emerging EV market, it needs to overcome the issue of high material cost and limited resources. This leads the research direction to sodium-ion batteries (SIBs), the most potential alternative batteries with infinite sodium resource from the ocean and earth crust. In the current work, Prussian blue (PB) with a crystal structure of face-centered cubic is used as cathode material for rechargeable SIBs with PB size ranging from 0.5 μm to 1 μm. Low interstitial water and low vacancies PB (Na_0.58Fe[Fe(CN)₆]_0.93γ_0.07·1.67H₂O) with high purity has been successfully synthesized at room temperature via a simple single iron source precipitation method. An excellent electrochemical performance has been shown with specific discharge capacity of 133 mAh g⁻¹ and with 90% capacity retention over 200 cycles.

KEYWORDS:

• Sodium-ion batteries
• Prussian blue
• cathode
• low interstitial water
• low vacancies

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE) of Malaysia through FRGS grant no. [FP019-2014B].