Open Access

An overview on battery research activities of BAM was given using a seletion of activities of all work packages within the field of activity EES and selected activities of divsion 3.6.

An overview of activities at BAM on the topic of sodium ion batteries was given. Examples of the internal SIB-links project were given and a focus on novel synthetic anodes.

Fe-N-C electrocatalysts are very promising alternatives for precious metal-based catalysts for energy conversion reactions.[1-3] Early reports on such materials date back to the 1960´s, when Jasinski pioneered the research based on tetrapyrrolic phthalocyanine macrocycles which were inspired by natural transition metal porphyrin complexes present in enzyme active sites.[3] For decades, the synthesis of these catalysts with a high iron loading was complicated by the formation of side phases due to the harsh reaction conditions facilitating side phase formation. In 2018, we introduced a mild procedure, which is conservative toward the carbon support and leads to active-site formation at low temperatures in a wet-chemical step, essentially decoupling the preparation of the N-C backbone from the preparation of the active sites.[4, 5] The key concept therein is the so-called active-site imprinting into the N-C backbone using pyrolytic template ion reactions.[4][5] Using the same precursor that is used for the preparation of phthalocyanines, we were able not only to produce atomically-dispersed single-phase Fe-N-Cs with a high iron loading, but were also able to selectively form tetrapyrrolic Fe-N4 complexes.[6] The tetrapyrrolic Fe-N-C derivatives are highly active and extraordinary selective electrocatalysts for the oxygen reduction reaction. Deconvolution of morphological effects on the performance allowed to quantify the intrinsic catalytic activity of the materials in acidic and alkaline conditions and gives new insights into the reaction mechanism in alkaline.[7, 8] A distinct degradation mechanism upon storage was found for the tetrapyrrolic sites and new insights on degradation upon fuel cell operation could be obtained.[9, 10] Herein, the general synthetic material design strategy for atomically dispersed catalysts will be discussed based on tetrapyrrolic Fe-N-C catalysts, which will be analyzed for their potential as PGM-free fuel cell catalysts.

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). 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 morphologically and chemically functional carbons. Morphologically, our target is a local separation of reversible sodium storage and irreversible losses in novel synthetic carbon anodes, using a core-shell concept. On chemical side, we aim at ion-binding functional groups. We investigated different methods to obtain core-shell structures to restrict SEI formation to the external particle surface, while leveraging the Na storage potential of porous carbon core materials. Moreover, we apply active-site imprinting to realise disting ion-binding features into the core carbons. The electrochemical performance of those materials can be rather easily altered upon removing/exchanging the ions bound to the functional group. Herein, we will focus on the synthesis of zeolitic imidazolate framework (ZIF) based NDCs. Different analytical methods, e.g., physisorption (N2, Ar, CO2), XPS, XAS, and NMR, will be used to understand the alteration of morphological and chemical features upon ion exchange.

Nach einer kurzen Einleitung zu kommerziellen Natrium-Ionen-Batterien, deren Zusammensetzung und Sicherheitstest die auch an der BAM untersucht wurden, folgt eine Vorstellung der Forschungsarbeiten des Fachbereich 3.6 im Rahmen des Verbundprojekts Dialysorb. Die Forschungsergebnisse stellen u.a. das Potenzial von synthetischen Anodenmaterialien dar.