Graphene Opens Doors To Sustainable Sodium-ion Batteries

Even though lithium ions work well for energy storage, lithium is an expensive metal with concerns regarding its long-term supply and environmental issues.

Sodium, on the other hand, is an abundant low-cost metal, and the main ingredient in seawater (and in kitchen salt). This makes sodium-ion batteries an interesting and sustainable alternative for reducing our need for critical raw materials. However, one major challenge is to increase the capacity.

At the current level of performance, sodium-ion batteries cannot compete with lithium-ion cells. One limiting factor is graphite, which is composed of stacked layers of graphene, and used as the anode in today’s lithium-ion batteries.

The ions intercalate in the graphite, which means that they can move in and out of the graphene layers and be stored for energy usage. Sodium ions are larger than lithium ions and interact differently. Therefore, they cannot be efficiently stored in the graphite structure. But the Chalmers researchers have come up with a novel way to solve this.

Jinhua Sun, a researcher at the Department of Industrial and Materials Science at Chalmers and first author of the scientific paper, published in Science Advances.

We have added a molecule spacer on one side of the graphene layer.

“When the layers are stacked together, the molecule creates larger space between graphene sheets and provides an interaction point, which leads to a significantly higher capacity,”

Ten times the energy capacity of standard graphite

Typically, the capacity of sodium intercalation in standard graphite is about 35 milliampere hours per gram (mAh g-1). This is less than one-tenth of the capacity for lithium-ion intercalation in graphite. With the novel graphene, the specific capacity for sodium ions is 332 milliampere hours per gram – approaching the value for lithium in graphite. The results also showed full reversibility and high cycling stability.

Professor Aleksandar Matic at the Department of Physics at Chalmers.

It was really exciting when we observed the sodium-ion intercalation with such high capacity.

“The research is still at an early stage, but the results are very promising. This shows that it’s possible to design graphene layers in an ordered structure that suits sodium ions, making it comparable to graphite,”

“Divine” Janus graphene opens doors to sustainable batteries

The study was initiated by Vincenzo Palermo in his previous role as Vice-Director of the Graphene Flagship, a European Commission-funded project coordinated by the Chalmers University of Technology.

The novel graphene has asymmetric chemical functionalization on opposite faces and is therefore often called Janus graphene, after the two-faced ancient Roman God Janus – the God of new beginnings, associated with doors and gates, and the first steps of a journey. In this case, the Janus graphene correlates well with roman mythology, potentially opening doors to high-capacity sodium-ion batteries.

Vincenzo Palermo, Affiliated Professor at the Department of Industrial and Materials Science at Chalmers.