Insights into solid electrolyte interphase formation and electrode in dual Ion battery

Abstract

The ever-increasing energy demands has led mankind to focus their attention on harnessing energy from renewable sources like solar, wind and water. However, the intermittent nature and low efficiency of power generation from these sources has hindered their progress towards replacing fossil fuels. Thus, efficient energy storage devices, especially rechargeable batteries have gained importance with increase in utilization of renewable energy resources as they enable the energy to be stored in form of chemical energy, transported, and converted back to electrical energy according to requirements [1, 2]. Lithium-ion batteries have thus become an inevitable part of today’s lifestyle finding its use from smartphones to electric vehicles. However, with extensive use of these batteries glaring shortcomings have also come forward such as safety concerns, limited availability of raw materials, production costs, etc. which have impelled researchers to explore alternative battery mechanisms [3, 4]. Thus, dual-ion batteries (DIB) have come up as an alternative battery mechanism which has gained huge attention from scientists in recent times [5]. The basic difference in DIBs being the origin of working cation and anion from the electrolyte which interact with separate electrodes, respectively during battery cycling mechanism. Aluminium anodes can be used in DIBs as they feature high volumetric capacity (∼8040 mAh/cm3; four times that of lithium anode), high abundance and environmental inertness [6, 7].