NASICON结构正极材料用于钠离子电池的研究进展

随着二次电池技术的迅速发展,锂离子电池(LIBs)已经成为了当今社会一种重要的储能装置。然而,地壳中锂资源有限、含锂化合物价格昂贵,因此科研工作者正在积极寻找LIBs的替代品。钠离子电池(SIBs)具有与LIBs相似的工作原理,且钠元素在地球上储量更丰富更均匀、价格更低廉,使得SIBs成为了最有希望替代LIBs的新型二次电池体系之一。不过,钠离子半径较大、充放电过程中电极材料的不可逆性更明显等缺点,明显地增加了开发高性能SIBs的难度。因此,寻找具有优异性能的电极材料,成为了当前SIBs研究的难点和重点。钠超离子导体(NASICON)结构材料是一类具有超快钠离子传导能力的化合物,在脱/嵌钠过程中具有离子传导率高、结构稳定等优点,表现出明显的应用潜力。本文将在介绍NASICON材料晶体结构的基础上,重点从过渡金属种类与个数,以及阴离子调控的角度,总结其研究进展,并分析了该类材料面临的主要问题和挑战。

Research Progress on NASICON-Type Cathode Materials for Sodium Ion Batteries

With the rapid development of secondary battery technology, lithium ion batteries (LIBs) have become an important energy storage device today. However, lithium resources in the earth''s crust are limited and lithium-based compounds are expensive. Hence, researchers are looking for the alternatives of LIBs. Not only sodium-ion batteries (SIBs) works at a similar mechanism as LIBs, but also sodium is more abundant and more homogeneous on the earth, and its price is lower, making SIBs are one most promising secondary battery system to replace LIBs. Unfortunately, the shortcomings including the larger Na⁺ radius and the higher irreversibility of electrode reactions lead to a very large difficulty to achieve high-performance SIBs. Therefore, it is still a big challenge to develop advanced electrode materials for SIBs. Amongst all types of cathode materials, Na superionic conductor (NASICON) type materials are one class of compounds with ultrafast Na⁺ transformation and high structural stability during the successive de-sodiation/sodiation processes, suggesting its obvious application possibility for actual SIBs. In this review, we firstly introduced the crystal structure of NASICON materials, and then summarized the research progresses on the NASICON-type cathode for SIBs from the point of view of types and numbers of transition metal and the introduction of anions, and further analyzed the main problems and challenges of NASICON-type materials.