A team of researchers from Boise State’s Micron School of Materials Science and Engineering, Argonne National Laboratory, the University of Chicago and the Center for Advanced Energy Studies recently published research entitled “Role of Lithium Doping in P2-Na0.67Ni0.33Mn0.67O2 for Sodium-Ion Batteries” in Chemistry of Materials.
Co-authors include Yingying Xie, Eric Gabriel, Longlong Fan, Inhui Hwang, Xiang Li, Haoyu Zhu, Yang Ren, Chengjun Sun, Julie Pipkin, Malia Dustin, Matthew Li, Zonghai Chen, Eungje Lee, and Hui Xiong.
In Xiong’s words, “Large-scale energy storage systems are urgently needed to enable the success of renewable but intermittent energy sources such as solar and wind power. Sodium ion batteries (SIBs) are a promising technology to address the need for energy storage, but their performance needs improvement to be competitive for this application. Currently, the energy density of SIBs is limited by the cathode materials. Dopants, especially lithium, have been shown to improve the performance of layered sodium transition metal oxide cathode materials significantly. This work demonstrates the nature in which lithium is incorporated into the layered structure has a distinct effect on the modification of the cathode’s properties, enhancing capacity and/or stability. A thorough understanding of the effect of lithium dopant location can inform the design of superior sodium ion battery cathode materials. High performance cathodes with lithium dopants may help address the growing challenge of large-scale energy storage to support renewable energy technology.”
The research can be viewed at: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.chemmater.1c00569