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An in-situ spectroscopy investigation of alkali metal interaction mechanism with the imide functional group

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Abstract

Organic anode materials have attracted considerable interest owing to their high tunability by adopting various active functional groups. However, the interaction mechanisms between the alkali metals and the active functional groups in host materials have been rarely studied systematically. Here, a widely used organic semiconductor of perylene-3,4,9,10-tetracarboxylic diimide (PTCDI) was selected as a model system to investigate how alkali metals interact with imide functional groups and induce changes in chemical and electronic structures of PTCDI. The interaction at the alkali/PTCDI interface was probed by in-situ X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy (UPS), synchrotron-based near edge X-ray absorption fine structure (NEXAFS), and corroborated by density functional theory (DFT) calculations. Our results indicate that the alkali metal replaces the hydrogen atoms in the imide group and interact with the imide nitrogen of PTCDI. Electron transfer induced gap states and downward band-bending like effects are identified on the alkali-deposited PTCDI surface. It was found that Na shows a stronger electron transfer effect than Li. Such a model study of alkali insertion/intercalation in PTCDI gives insights for the exploration of the potential host materials for alkali storage applications.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the financial support from Singapore MOE Tier II grant R143-000-A29-112, Academic Research Fund Tie I grant RG104/18, and the National Research Foundation under the grant of NRF2017NRF-NSFC001-007, as well as the computing resources from National Supercomputing Centre Singapore.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry, National University of Singapore, Singapore, 117543, Singapore

    Xu Lian, Zhirui Ma, Jinlin Yang, Shuo Sun, Chengding Gu, Yuan Liu & Wei Chen

  2. Centre for Advanced 2D Materials, National University of Singapore, Singapore, 117546, Singapore

    Xu Lian

  3. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, 639798, Singapore

    Zhonghan Zhang & Shuzhou Li

  4. National University of Singapore (Suzhou) Research Institute, Suzhou, 215123, China

    Jinlin Yang & Wei Chen

  5. Joint School of National University of Singapore and Tianjin University, International Campus of Tianjin University, Fuzhou, 350207, China

    Yuan Liu & Wei Chen

  6. National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, Department of Chemical Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230029, China

    Honghe Ding, Jun Hu, Xu Cao & Junfa Zhu

  7. Department of Physics, National University of Singapore, Singapore, 117542, Singapore

    Wei Chen

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  1. Xu Lian
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Correspondence to Shuzhou Li or Wei Chen.

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Lian, X., Ma, Z., Zhang, Z. et al. An in-situ spectroscopy investigation of alkali metal interaction mechanism with the imide functional group. Nano Res. 13, 3224–3229 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-020-2991-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-020-2991-6

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