Abstract
Solar-to-electricity energy conversion and large scale electricity storage technologies are key to achieve a sustainable development of society. For energy conversion, photoelectrochemical solar cells were proposed as an economic alternative to the conventional Si-based technology. For energy storage, metal-ion batteries are a very promising technology. Titania (TiO2) based anodes are widely used in photoelectrochemical cells and have recently emerged as safe, high-rate anodes for metal-ion batteries. In both applications, titania interacts with electrolyte species: molecules and metal ions. Details of this interaction determine the performance of the electrode in both technologies, but no unified theoretical description exists, e.g., there is no systematic description of the effects of Li, Na insertion into TiO2 on solar cell performance (while it is widely studied in battery research) and no description of effects of surface adsorbents on the performance of battery anodes (while they are widely studied in solar cell research). In fact, there is no systematic description of interactions of electrolyte species with TiO2 of different phases and morphologies. We propose a computation-focused study that will bridge the two fields that have heretofore largely been developing in parallel and will identify improved anode materials for both photoelectrochemical solar cells and metal-ion batteries.
Highlights
Solar-to-electricity energy conversion technologies are key to achieve a sustainable development of society
Photoelectrochemical solar cells and, dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSC) [2,3] and direct injection cells [4], were proposed as an economic alternative to the conventional Si-based technology, as they can avoid the use of high-purity Si and face no resource limitations [5,6]
What are the effects of nanosizing? What is the dynamics of Na vs. Li insertion, and how to optimize it?. Another evidence of this separation, which we propose to bridge for the benefit of both fields, is in the fact that while DSSC research has paid much attention to the use of co-adsorbate molecules to functionalize TiO2 anodes [28,29,51,52,53], this has not been done for batteries
Summary
Solar-to-electricity energy conversion technologies are key to achieve a sustainable development of society. Interactions with the electrolyte are usually considered in the context of reactions leading to the SEI (solid-electrolyte interface) formation or to an irreversible loss of the active metal (formation of carbonates) [19,20,21, 70,71,72,73] It has, been established that surface properties of a battery anode (adsorption energy, insertion barrier) can be more important for storage than its bulk properties [74]. It will be possible to identify titania nano-morphologies optimal for batter and solar cell performance Such a study would bridge the two fields that have largely been developing in parallel and would identify improved anode materials for both photoelectrochemical solar cells and metal-ion batteries
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