Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) are growing in popularity for various electric applications, but suffer from uneven distribution and limited resources of Li and Co elements, which led to serious concern for the sustainable future of LIBs.  

Dual-ion batteries (DIBs) shown to be a pleasing alternative, owing to its merits of environmental friendly, excellent cyclic stability, and good safety. 

However, the specific capacity of the lithium titanate (LTO)-DIB is still relatively low (< 50 mAh g^-1), which ascribe to the mismatching reaction kinetics between the graphite cathode and LTO anode for the low conductivity of LTO. 

Researchers from the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology (SIAT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences prepared a LTO/carbon composite with in-situ implanted carbon nanofilms and 3D porous structure (LTO@3DC) by the combination of organic molecule coupling, freeze drying, and pyrolysis. 

The study was published in Chemical Engineering Journal. 

The carbon nanofilms and 3D porous structure could elevate the electron conductivity and Li+ ions diffusion kinetics, led to good cycling stability and high rate performance. 

Furthermore, researchers constructed DIB configuration by combining fast kinetics LTO@3DC anode and environmental friendly expanded graphite (EG) cathode (LTO@3DC-DIB), which exhibited significantly enhanced performances with a high specific capacity 110 mAh g^-1 at 2 C, good rate capability and cycle performance with a capacity retention of ~100% after 700 cycles at 5 C, showed great potential for environmental friendly and high safety energy storage applications. 

Though there’s some way to go yet before the battery industry will be able to take advantage of the innovation, DIBs possess potentially attractive properties/performance and present some potentials as next-generation rechargeable batteries. 

Figure. Schematically shows the formation of the LTO@3DC composite (Image by SIAT)

Media Contact: 
ZHANG Xiaomin 
Email: xm.zhang@siat.ac.cn