2021 roadmap for sodium-ion batteries

Nuria Tapia-Ruiz (1) , A. Robert Armstrong (2) , Hande Alptekin (3) , Marco Amores (4) , Heather Au (3) , Jerry Barker (5) , Rebecca Boston (4) , William Brant (6) , Jake Brittain (7) , Yue Chen (1) , Manish Chhowalla (8) , Yong-Seok Choi (9) , Sara Costa (2) , Maria Crespo Ribadeneyra (3) , Serena Cussen (4) , Edmund Cussen (4) , William David (7) , Aamod Desai (10) , Stewart Dickson (10) , Emmanuel Eweka (11) , Juan Forero-Saboya (12) , Clare Grey (8) , John Griffin (1) , Peter Gross (4) , Xiao Hua (4) , John Irvine (10) , Patrik Johansson (13) , Martin Jones (14) , Martin Karlsmo (11) , Emma Kendrick (15) , Eunjeong Kim (10) , Oleg Kolosov (1) , Zhuangnan Li (8) , Stijn Mertens (1) , Ronnie Mogensen (16) , Laure Monconduit (17, 18) , Russell Morris (10) , Andrew Naylor (16) , Shahin Nikman (1) , Christopher O’keefe (8) , Darren Ould (8) , R Palgrave (9) , Philippe Poizot (19) , Alexandre Ponrouch (12) , Stéven Renault (19) , Emily Reynolds (14) , Ashish Rudola (5) , Ruth Sayers (5) , David Scanlon (9) , S Sen (9) , Valerie Seymour (1) , Begoña Silván (1) , Moulay Tahar Sougrati (17, 18) , Lorenzo Stievano (17, 18) , Grant Stone (11) , Chris Thomas (4) , Maria-Magdalena Titirici (3) , Jincheng Tong (8) , Thomas Wood (11) , Dominic Wright (8) , Reza Younesi (16)

1 Lancaster University
2 Harwell Science and Innovation Campus
3 Imperial College London
4 University of Sheffield [Sheffield]
5 Faradion Limited
6 University of Virginia
7 University of Oxford
8 CAM - University of Cambridge [UK]
9 UCL - University College of London [London]
10 University of St Andrews [Scotland]
11 AUTRES
12 Institut de Ciència de Materials de Barcelona (ICMAB-CSIC)
13 Chalmers University of Technology [Gothenburg, Sweden]
14 STFC - Science and Technology Facilities Council
15 University of Birmingham [Birmingham]
16 Uppsala University
17 ICGM - Institut Charles Gerhardt Montpellier - Institut de Chimie Moléculaire et des Matériaux de Montpellier
18 RS2E - Réseau sur le stockage électrochimique de l'énergie
19 IMN - Institut des Matériaux Jean Rouxel

Increasing concerns regarding the sustainability of lithium sources, due to their limited availability and consequent expected price increase, have raised awareness of the importance of developing alternative energy-storage candidates that can sustain the ever-growing energy demand. Furthermore, limitations on the availability of the transition metals used in the manufacturing of cathode materials, together with questionable mining practices, are driving development towards more sustainable elements. Given the uniformly high abundance and cost-effectiveness of sodium, as well as its very suitable redox potential (close to that of lithium), sodium-ion battery technology offers tremendous potential to be a counterpart to lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) in different application scenarios, such as stationary energy storage and low-cost vehicles. This potential is reflected by the major investments that are being made by industry in a wide variety of markets and in diverse material combinations. Despite the associated advantages of being a drop-in replacement for LIBs, there are remarkable differences in the physicochemical properties between sodium and lithium that give rise to different behaviours, for example, different coordination preferences in compounds, desolvation energies, or solubility of the solid–electrolyte interphase inorganic salt components. This demands a more detailed study of the underlying physical and chemical processes occurring in sodium-ion batteries and allows great scope for groundbreaking advances in the field, from lab-scale to scale-up. This roadmap provides an extensive review by experts in academia and industry of the current state of the art in 2021 and the different research directions and strategies currently underway to improve the performance of sodium-ion batteries. The aim is to provide an opinion with respect to the current challenges and opportunities, from the fundamental properties to the practical applications of this technology.

Domaines: Matériaux

Nuria Tapia-Ruiz, A. Robert Armstrong, Hande Alptekin, Marco Amores, Heather Au, et al.. 2021 roadmap for sodium-ion batteries. JPhys Energy, 2021, 3 (3), pp.031503. ⟨10.1088/2515-7655/ac01ef⟩. ⟨hal-03327098⟩