Open Access

In this lecture the fundamental principles of batteries are briefly introduced aligned by the historical development of the technology. The introduction is continued with an overview on current challenges regarding performance, durability, sustainability, cost and safety. Lastly, research trend on approaches to tackle the challenges are discussed by selected examples.

The current strong interest in electromotive mobility and the need to transition to an energy grid with sustainable storage devices has led to a renewed interest in sodium ion batteries (SIBs). Chinese battery manufacturers marketed the first cells, which are commercially available now. We have purchased and investigated two of these early cells to understand their composition and be able to compare to the state-of-the-art in the scientific community. According to our results and the current literature, all commercial cells utilize carbon-based anodes, with the characteristic sloping charge-discharge profile. In the presentation the results will be discussed in context with safety aspect and space for improvement. The latter aspect will be focused on hard carbon anodes. Amorphous disordered carbons such as hard carbons (HCs) are promising candidates for high-capacity negative electrode materials in SIBs. Their high capacities, however, are often accompanied with high irreversible capacity losses during the initial cycles,[1] while low initial losses are accompanied with moderate capacities.[2] In our research we are aiming at morphologically improved carbons to reduce irreversible losses using a core-shell concept.[3, 4]

Increasing prices of the material basis for lithium-ion batteries caused by limited production capacities or resource abundance has led to a renewed interest in sodium ion batteries (SIBs). Therein, amorphous disordered carbons such as hard carbons (HCs) are promising candidates for high-capacity negative electrode materials in SIBs. Their high capacities, however, are often accompanied with high irreversible capacity losses during the initial cycles,[1] while low initial losses are mostly accompanied with moderate capacities.[2] In our research we are aiming at morphologically improved carbons to reduce irreversible losses using a core-shell concept, leading to spacial separation of the reversible storage and unfavorable side reactions.[3] We investigated different methods to obtain core-shell structures with improved interfaces to restrict SEI formation to the external particle surface, while leveraging the Na storage potential of porous carbon core materials. With a simple and scalable chemical vapour deposition we obtained a 190-fold decrease in surface roughness, resulting in drastically reduced first cycle losses. Interestingly, the sodiation capacity at the same time increased to 400 mAh/g revealing the interference of excessive SEI formation with the storage process within the particles.

In dem Vortrag wird ein Fortschrittsbericht über die laufenden Arbeiten im BMBF-geförderten Verbundprojekt „Dialysorb“ gegeben. Nach einer kurzen Schilderung der Arbeitspaketstruktur und den Arbeitspaketinhalten werden einzelne wissenschaftliche Ergebnisse genannt und kurz diskutiert. So gelang es hier u.a. hochporöse Materialien mittels Gasphasenabscheidung von Kohlenstoffverbindungen derart zu modifizieren, dass nur noch ein Bruchteil der Porosität mittels Gassorption messbar ist. Elektrochemische Sodiierungs-/Dessodiierungsergebnisse deuten darauf hin, dass die Porosität im Kern der Materialien erhalten ist, da die reversible Sodiierungskapazität deutlich erhöht ist. Abschließend werden folgende Arbeitschritte erläutert und der Vortrag zur Diskussion gestellt.

Porous carbon materials are known for their applicability in important areas such as sorption, catalysis and electrochemistry (e.g. fuel cell catalysts, supercapacitor or battery electrodes). It was shown that nitrogen doped carbons (NDCs) act as an inexpensive and highly active non-metal catalyst in the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR), with the potential to reach performances of practical need one day. A key strategy towards improvement for this aim comprises the generation of advantageous porosity, which typically means high surface area and mass transport pores as well as the control over the chemistry of catalytically active sites. My group developed novel sol-gel type strategies that are using molten salts or molten acids as unconventional reaction medium for the porogenesis in doped carbons, thereby revisiting classic activation techniques. Carbon materials with extra high surface area of ~2800 m2 g-1 and pore volumes, up to four times as high as in commercial activated carbons, are obtained. Hierarchical pore systems, like used in nature (leaves, lungs, etc.) facilitate some of the electrochemical performances. Moreover, because of the elements also defining organic matter, also binding motifs can be realized that are reminiscent of proteins/enzymes. We established the pyrolytic template-ion reaction using cations like Mg2+ and Zn2+ to imprint tetrapyrrolic N4 sites (like in the heme molecule), embedded into the carbon structure. The imprinted structure may be utilized as catalytically active site by performing ion-exchange reactions. This way catalytic activity can be tuned for different societal important reactions, but also the defined catalysts structure allows the assignment of structure-performance relations. Other “tricks” that nature uses, are to influence the passage of ions through cell walls, or to expel water molecules from catalytically active sites. I will show some recent work on carbon electrodes used as battery active materials that utilizes similar pathways.