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Bipolar electrode architecture enables high-energy aqueous rechargeable sodium ion battery

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Abstract

Aqueous rechargeable sodium ion batteries (ARSIBs), with intrinsic safety, low cost, and greenness, are attracting more and more attentions for large scale energy storage application. However, the low energy density hampers their practical application. Here, a battery architecture designed by bipolar electrode with graphite/amorphous carbon film as current collector shows high energy density and excellent rate-capability. The bipolar electrode architecture is designed to not only improve energy density of practical battery by minimizing inactive ingredient, such as tabs and cases, but also guarantee high rate-capability through a short electron transport distance in the through-plane direction instead of in-plane direction for traditional cell architecture. As a proof of concept, a prototype pouch cell of 8 V based on six Na2MnFe(CN)6∥NaTi2(PO4)3 bipolar electrodes stacking using a “water-in-polymer” gel electrolyte is demonstrated to cycle up to 4,000 times, with a high energy density of 86 Wh·kg−1 based on total mass of both cathode and anode. This result opens a new avenue to develop advance high-energy ARSIBs for grid-scale energy storage applications.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 52102261), the Natural Science Foundation of the Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions of China (No. 20KJB150007), the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (No. BK20210942), the Applied Basic Research Programs of Changzhou (No. CJ20200034), and Changzhou Science and Technology Young Talents Promotion Project (No. KYZ21005).

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  1. School of Chemistry and Materials, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, China

    Zhiguo Hou, Huaisheng Ao & Yitai Qian

  2. Jiangsu University of Technology, Changzhou, 213001, China

    Wutao Mao, Zixiang Zhang & Jiawu Chen

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  1. Zhiguo Hou
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  2. Wutao Mao
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Correspondence to Zhiguo Hou or Yitai Qian.

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Hou, Z., Mao, W., Zhang, Z. et al. Bipolar electrode architecture enables high-energy aqueous rechargeable sodium ion battery. Nano Res. 15, 5072–5080 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-022-4113-0

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