Carbon nanospheres improve potassium battery performance

Chinese researchers have discovered a new way to synthesize hollow carbon nanospheres and used the carbon nanospheres to create a potassium-ion battery that is a cheaper alternative to lithium-ion batteries. Cao Anmin, an expert from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, explained that hollow carbon nanospheres hold great promise in energy storage, catalysis and biomedicine. While traditional methods for preparing hollow carbon structures require hard templates, harmful chemicals such as sodium hydroxide or hydrofluoric acid, this new method is an efficient stand-alone process. Cao Anmin's team found that the growth of nanospheres could be controlled with polymeric resins, at 1200°Converted to the final hollow carbon product after carbonization in a C oven. Schematic source of the different evolution paths of hollow carbon nanostructures: The American Journal of Chemistry Chinese team prepared nanospheres with both mesoporous and ordinary surface properties by different synthetic methods. Researchers can observe the internal structure of hollow carbon nanospheres through transmission electron microscopy. Prof. Cao explained: The electron beam penetrates the particles, and the shadows and blanks appearing correspond to the particle entities and holes, respectively. Prof. Cao and his team used these nanospheres as high-capacity anodes in potassium-ion batteries. According to Prof. Cao, the hollow-structured samples should alleviate the problems caused by the accumulation of large amounts of potassium ions on the electrodes. Prof. Cao explained: Due to the abundance of potassium resources, potassium-ion batteries will be a good choice for battery development, and at the same time, potassium-ion batteries can theoretically provide a higher voltage output. Karin Kleiner, a battery researcher at Diamond Light Source in Oxford, points out that potassium-ion-based batteries may not enter the consumer market anytime soon. Nonetheless, she also mentioned that Prof. Cao's use of nanospheres as a new cathode material will increase the energy density of the battery system, thus having greater advantages over traditional lithium-ion batteries, providing great potential for research. Kleiner also explained how amorphous carbon enters each electrode and increases its kinetic tendency. If it can prove that nanospheres have advantages, there will be huge market development potential. The Chinese team found that the three-layered nanospheres were more stable and greatly increased the battery capacity. But Professor Cao also said: Although our battery has good stability and large capacity, our sample also has a big problem of low Coulomb efficiency. They are currently working on this problem and hope to have a breakthrough soon. The original text is from chemistryworld, the original title: Carbon nanospheres power up potassium batteries, translated and arranged by the material science and technology online team.