Metal Phosphide-Based 2D Nanomaterials for Batteries

Abstract

Rechargeable lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) have garnered widespread applications in our daily life ascribing to their considerable energy density and cost-effectiveness. However, the Li metal price raise as well as geographically constrained Li mineral reserves have attracted Na-ion batteries (SIBs) as an alternative to LIBs. Anode materials are the critical components of batteries to determine the battery performances, the research on anode materials have encountered great challenges since, commercial graphite anode for LIBs exhibits ultralow theoretical capacity. Recently, metal phosphides have also shown promising performances among all the explored anode materials for advanced energy storage devices due to their low-cost, high volumetric/gravimetric capacities. Since metal phosphides lie between the more ionic metal nitrides and the intermetallic metal antimonides in their chemistry, metal phosphides exhibit superior chemical properties because of the existence of multi-electron orbitals compared with metal nitrides. It should be also noted that metal phosphide anodes derived from phosphorus-based materials often show improved stability and cyclic performances upon the combination reaction of phosphorus and metal. Therefore, this chapter explored the recent progress of 2D structure-based various metal phosphides by focusing on their advantages/disadvantages and potential applications as a new class of anode materials for both LIBs and SIBs.