Co-Intercalation Batteries (CoIBs): The Use of TiS2 As Electrode for Solvent Co-Intercalation in Sodium-Ion Batteries
Authors: Alvarez Ferrero Guillermo , Åvall Gustav , Mazzio Katherine , Janßen Knut , Son Youhyun , Risse Sebastian , Adelhelm Philipp 
Published: September 2023

With the rising demand for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), sodium-ion batteries (SIBs) have become an attractive alternative with the promise of improved safety, reduced cost, and lower environmental impact.1 However, the larger ion size of sodium cation has major consequence on the battery chemistry, which provides several challenges and opportunities for designing electrode materials and electrolyte solutions.2

Graphite is the currently most used anode material in LIBs. However, its use in SIBs, with traditional carbonate-based electrolytes, results in very poor specific capacities due to unfavorable thermodynamic processes.3

A strategy around this problem is to choose different solvents: Ethers and in particular glymes can exhibit a co-intercalation behavior into the graphite structure by forming ternary graphite intercalation compounds.4, 5 Although the co-intercalation of solvent molecules with sodium cation leads to a large increase in the graphite framework, the cycle life and rate capability of the reaction are excellent.

Regardless of this, there is a lack of evidence for a comparable reaction with other electrode materials. Hence, it would be of interest to identify a cathode material that operates via this same mechanism. A battery based on solvent co-intercalation at both electrodes can have minimized charge-transfer resistances due to the absence of desolvation steps, and great cycle life. Thus, such a system can show high power density over many cycles. It has also been shown that stripping of the solvation shell can be the rate limiting step for battery operation, especially at subzero temperatures.6 Such a solvent co-intercalation battery (CoIB) could therefore be more energy efficient compared to other batteries or could enable a better low-temperature performance.

Transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) have emerged as promising anode materials owing to their low cost, high electric conductivity, good thermal stability and environmental friendliness. Among them, titanium sulphide (TiS2), with a two-dimensional framework, exhibits several advantages such as a high conductivity (compare to other metal oxides), a larger interlayer distance (0.569 nm) compared to graphite (0.335 nm) and high stability. 7

Several papers have reported on the use of TiS2 as an anode material for SIBs, and observed that the voltage profiles and electrochemical behaviour of the system is highly dependent on the choice of electrolyte. However, this has seldomly been explicitly stated and the cause of the electrolyte dependence has never been investigated. By using operando and in-situ techniques such as Operando XRD and dilatometry, Na-diglyme complexes were showed to co-intercalate, similar as graphite, into TiS2. In contrast, no signs of solvent co-intercalation are observed in cyclic ethers and conventional carbonate-based electrolytes – where instead the redox reaction with TiS2 results in the formation of different NaxTiS2 compounds.

As we identified TiS2 as “co-intercalation electrode” in glyme-based electrolytes it served to create the first ever solvent co-intercalation battery (CoIB – pronounced Co-IB) which was done by pairing TiS2 (positive electrode) with graphite (negative electrode).8 This work could enable the development of highly energy efficient batteries with minimum charge transfer resistances and

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an improved low temperature performance, where the charge transfer can become rate limiting.

Figure 1