A Functional Cathode Sodium Compensation Agent for Stable Sodium-Ion Batteries

Hard carbon (HC) is widely used in sodium-ion batteries (SIBs), but its performance has always been limited by low initial Coulombic efficiency (ICE) and cycling stability. Cathode compensation agent is a favorable strategy to make up for the loss of active sodium ions consumed by HC anode. Yet it lacks agent that effectively decomposes to increase the active sodium ions as well as regulate carbon defects for decreasing the irreversible sodium ions consumption. Here, we propose 1,2-dihydroxybenzene Na salt (NaDB) as a cathode compensation agent with high specific capacity (347.9 mAh g), lower desodiation potential (2.4–2.8 V) and high utilization (99%). Meanwhile, its byproduct could functionalize HC with more CO groups and promotes its reversible capacity. Consequently, the presodiation hard carbon (pHC) anode exhibits highly reversible capacity of 204.7 mAh g with 98% retention at 5 C rate over 1000 cycles. Moreover, with 5 wt% NaDB initially coated on the NaV(PO) (NVP) cathode, the capacity retention of NVP + NaDB|HC cell could increase form 36%–89% after 1000 cycles at 1 C rate. This work provides a new avenue to improve SIBs reversible capacity and cycling performance through designing functional cathode compensation agent.