About the Seminar

To fully utilize renewable energy for energy generation, energy storage is needed to accommodate times when energy generation is inhibited and during peak hours. Rechargeable batteries are projected to accommodate short-term storage needs, and sodium-ion batteries (NIBs) are a promising complimentary technology to lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) due to their low material cost and working principles. The common LIB anode, graphite, performs poorly in NIB systems, so research on alternative anode materials is pivotal to the deployment of these systems. An anode of interest, tin, has promising qualities with a high theoretical capacity with sodium, however, suffers from mechanical instability which arises from volume expansion during cycling. Recently, multiple groups have achieved high reversibility in the sodiation of tin by using glyme-based electrolytes. Here, the work uncovering the interfacial chemistry between glymes and tin anodes in NIBs will be examined, with particular emphasis placed on recent work published by the Passerini group. Moving forward, these studies offer insight to my work on using tin antimonide as an anode material, as an understanding of how different electrolytes interact with tin helps direct my research toward a better electrolyte formulation for tin antimonide.