Revealing instability and irreversibility in nonaqueous sodium-O2 battery chemistry

Sayed Youssef Sayed; Koffi P C Yao; David G Kwabi; Thomas P Batcho; Chibueze V Amanchukwu; Shuting Feng; Carl V Thompson; Yang Shao-Horn

doi:10.1039/c6cc02291j

Revealing instability and irreversibility in nonaqueous sodium-O2 battery chemistry

Chem Commun (Camb). 2016 Jul 26;52(62):9691-4. doi: 10.1039/c6cc02291j.

Authors

Sayed Youssef Sayed¹, Koffi P C Yao², David G Kwabi², Thomas P Batcho³, Chibueze V Amanchukwu⁴, Shuting Feng⁴, Carl V Thompson³, Yang Shao-Horn⁵

Affiliations

¹ The Research Laboratory of Electronics and the Electrochemical Energy Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. shaohorn@mit.edu.
² Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
³ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
⁴ Department of Chemical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
⁵ The Research Laboratory of Electronics and the Electrochemical Energy Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. shaohorn@mit.edu and Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA and Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

PMID: 27406258
DOI: 10.1039/c6cc02291j

Abstract

Charging kinetics and reversibility of Na-O2 batteries can be influenced greatly by the particle size of NaO2 formed upon discharge, and exposure time (reactivity) of NaO2 to the electrolyte. Micrometer-sized NaO2 cubes formed at high discharge rates were charged at smaller overpotentials compared to nanometer-sized counterparts formed at low rates.