Noble metal single-atoms for lithium-ion batteries: A booster for ultrafast charging/discharging in carbon electrodes

Abstract

Despite the popularity of single metal atoms (SMAs) in many applications, their utilization in lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) has seldom been explored to date. To examine the potential benefits of SMAs in LIBs, we prepared porous carbons where one of three different noble metals (Au, Ag, and Pt) was embedded in the form of SMAs via a simple galvanic replacement reaction. When exploited as an anode material for LIBs, these SMA-incorporated carbons showed an enhanced capacity compared to control samples that had no SMAs in the carbon network. Our investigation also revealed that the effect of SMAs on the LIB performance depends on the types of metal incorporated, among which Ag SMAs stand out in terms of rate capability and long-term stability. In particular, the Ag SMA-embedded carbon exhibited superior performance even at ultrafast charging/discharging rates, highlighting the unprecedented effects of SMAs as capacity boosters. The reasons for this newly found SMA effect are attributed to the lower interfacial resistances that are induced by delicate modulation of the electronic structure of carbon in the presence of Ag SMAs. This is the first report to harness SMAs for LIBs, which we speculate will open a new frontier in the applications of SMAs.