Spin‐Polarized Surface Capacitance Effects Enable Fe3O4 Anode Superior Wide Operation‐Temperature Sodium Storage

Abstract

Abstract Fe3O4 is widely investigated as an anode for ambient sodium‐ion batteries (SIBs), but its electrochemical properties in the wide operation‐temperature range have rarely been studied. Herein, the Fe3O4 nanoparticles, which are well encapsulated by carbon nanolayers, are uniformly dispersed on the graphene basal plane (named Fe3O4/C@G) to be used as the anode for SIBs. The existence of graphene can reduce the size of Fe3O4/C nanoparticles from 150 to 80 nm and greatly boost charge transport capability of electrode, resulting in an obvious size decrease of superparamagnetic Fe nanoparticles generated from the conversion reaction from 5 to 2 nm. Importantly, the ultra‐small superparamagnetic Fe nanoparticles (≈2 nm) can induce a strong spin‐polarized surface capacitance effect at operating temperatures ranging from −40 to 60 °C, thus achieving highly efficient Na‐ion transport and storage in a wide operation‐temperature range. Consequently, the Fe3O4/C@G anode shows high capacity, excellent fast‐charging capability, and cycling stability ranging from −40 to 60 °C in half/full cells. This work demonstrates the viability of Fe3O4 as anode for wide operation‐temperature SIBs and reveals that spin‐polarized surface capacitance effects can promote Na‐ion storage over a wide operation temperature range.

Keywords

• Fe3O4 anode
• sodium‐ion batteries
• spin‐polarized surface capacitance effect
• wide operation‐temperature