Mechanically Exfoliated Graphite for Highly Reversible Na-Storage with Carbon Coated Na₃V₂(PO₄)₃ Cathode with...

Tremendous efforts are put forward to develop novel high-performance electrodes for Na-ion batteries (SIBs) in order to replace commercial Li-ion batteries (LIBs). Graphite, the most versatile anode for LIBs, fails to accommodate Na⁺ions owing to the poor thermodynamic stability of the binary graphite intercalation compound. This study aims to exfoliate the layers of graphite through a simple mechanical process at different time intervals (1, 5, 10, 20, 40, and 80 h) and examine the potential candidate for Na-storage in the presence of carbonate-based electrolytes. This study reports that ball milling plays a vital role in the performance of the graphite in Na-storage. The graphite exfoliated for 80 h (EG-80h) rendered an excellent reversible capacity of 209 mAh g^-1 with coulombic efficiency of >99% after 100 cycles in EC-based electrolyte. In situ impedance analysis is performed to validate the charge storage mechanism and Na-ion kinetics. The performance of EG-80h in a full-cell assembly is evaluated with a carbon-coated Na₃V₂(PO₄)₃ cathode, which exhibited an initial capacity of ≈75 mAh g^-1 and energy density of 201 Wh kg^-1. In addition, the adaptability of the NVPC/EG-80h cell at different temperatures is examined from -10 to 50 °C, displaying excellent performance in both high and low-temperature conditions.