Enabling Superior Electrochemical Properties for Highly Efficient Potassium Storage by Impregnating Ultrafine Sb Nanocrystals within Nanochannel-Containing Carbon Nanofibers

Abstract

Sb-based nanocomposites are attractive anode materials for batteries as they exhibit large theoretical capacity and impressive working voltage. However, tardy potassium ion diffusion characteristics, unstable Sb/electrolyte interphase, and huge volume variation pose a challenge, hindering their practical use for potassium-ion batteries (PIBs). Now, a simple robust strategy is presented for uniformly impregnating ultrasmall Sb nanocrystals within carbon nanofibers containing an array of hollow nanochannels (denoted u-Sb@CNFs), resolving the issues above and yielding high-performance PIBs. u-Sb@CNFs can be directly employed as an anode, thereby dispensing with the need for conductive additives and binders. Such a judiciously crafted u-Sb@CNF-based anode renders a set of intriguing electrochemical properties, representing large charge capacity, unprecedented cycling stability, and outstanding rate performance. A reversible capacity of 225 mAh g(-1) is retained after 2000 cycles at 1 A g(-1).