Sodium Alginate Enabled Advanced Layered Manganese-Based Cathode for Sodium-Ion Batteries

Sodium-ion batteries (SIBs) are promising candidates applied to large-scale energy storage systems owing to abundant sodium resources and high economic efficiency. Layered manganese-based oxides as a prevailing cathode for sodium-ion batteries have been extensively studied, where doping or coating has been demonstrated to improve the electrochemical performance. However, the binder that tends to be the popular poly(vinylidene difluoride), is revealed to generate swellability upon cycling, leading to electrode material cracks and disconnection with current collectors. For the above issues, in this work, environmentally friendly sodium alginate is utilized as the aqueous binder in a conventional layered transition-metal oxide cathode P2-Na_2/3MnO₂ for SIBs. Through credible comparative experiments, sodium alginate is testified to play an essential role in suppressing cracks on the surface of materials, preventing surge in charge-transfer resistance and restraining detachment between electrode and current collector. Therefore, sodium alginate is proved to be an ideal binder to match with P2-Na_2/3MnO₂, where some issues existed before, as a promising cathode material with excellent performance and low cost. This study displays that improving battery performance by exploring suitable binder systems can equal or even exceed the performance improvement through modification of the material itself, and this perspective of enhancement should not be ignored.