Understanding the High-Performance Anode Material of CoC2 O4 ⋅2 H2 O Microrods Wrapped by Reduced Graphene Oxide for Lithium-Ion and Sodium-Ion Batteries

Synchronous Redox Reactions in Copper Oxalate Enable High-Capacity Anode for Proton Battery

Proton batteries are competitive due to their merits such as high safety, low cost, and fast kinetics. However, it is generally difficult for current studies of proton batteries to combine high capacity and high stability, while the research on proton storage mechanism and redox behavior is still in its infancy. Herein, the polyanionic layered copper oxalate is proposed as the anode for a high-capacity proton battery for the first time. The copper oxalate allows for reversible proton insertion/extraction through the layered space but also achieves high capacity through synchronous redox reactions of Cu2+ and C2O42-. During the discharge process, the bivalent Cu-ion is reduced, whereas the C═O of the oxalate group is partially converted to C-O. This synchronous behavior presents two units of charge transfer, enabling the embedding of two units of protons in the (110) crystal face. As a result, the copper oxalate anode demonstrates a high specific capacity of 226 mAh g-1 and maintains stable operation over 1000 cycles with a retention of 98%. This work offers new insights into the development of dual-redox electrode materials for high-capacity proton batteries.

Structure Recovery and Recycling of the Used LiCoO2 Cathode Material

The large number of lithium batteries have been retiring from the market of energy storage. Thus, the recycling of the used electrode materials is becoming urgent. In this study, the industrial machinery processing was used to recover the crystal structure of the waste LiCoO 2 materials with the combination of small-scale equipment repair technology. The results show that the crystal parameters of the repaired LiCoO 2 material become small, the unit cell volume is reduced, and the crystal structure tends to be stable. The Co-O bond length of 1.9134 nm, O-Co-O bond angle of 94.72º, the (003) interplanar spacing of 0.467 nm indicate the excellent recovery level of the repaired LiCoO 2 . In addition, the electrochemical performance of the repaired LiCoO 2 material is greatly improved, compared with the waste material. The capacity of the repaired electrode material can be maintained at 120 mAh g -1 after 100 cycles at the current density of 0.2 C. The promising rate performance of the repaired electrode material demonstrates the stable structure. This research work provides a large-scale method for the direct recovery of LiCoO 2 with the reduction of unnecessary energy and reagent consumption, which will be beneficial to the environmental protection.