Promising anode materials for alkali metal ion batteries: A case study on cobalt anti-MXenes

There is a continuous demand for energy storage devices with high energy density in consumer electronics, electric vehicles, and the grid energy market. Although commercial lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) satisfy the current needs, the limited availability of raw materials and moderate specific charge capacities (SCC) of LIBS, motivated scientists to search for alternate anode materials for LIBs and also to find technologies beyond LIBs. In this work, we studied the potential of six Cobalt anti-MXenes (CoAs, CoB, CoP, CoS, CoSe, and CoSi), a class of newly discovered 2D materials, as anode materials for lithium, sodium, and potassium ion batteries (LIBs, NIBs, and KIBs). We found that these materials are good electrical conductors and have high adsorption stability for the alkali metal ions, which helps to prevent the formation of dendrites and increase the cycle life of the battery. They also show moderate to low migration energy barriers (MEBs), indicating the potential for faster charge-discharge kinetics. We also explained the slightly counter-intuitive result of observing low MEBs along with high adsorption stability. Furthermore, Co-anti-MXenes can adsorb multiple alkali atoms per formula unit, resulting in high specific charge capacities and low average anodic voltages. For example, as anode materials for lithium-ion batteries, CoP and CoSi have SCC values of 1075.4 mAh g-1 and 934 mAh g-1, and anodic voltages as low as 0.28 V and 0.43 V, respectively. Moreover, even the maximally metallated Co-anti-MXenes did not show agglomeration tendency at room temperature. Also, the volume expansion of these materials is minimum for both Li and Na adsorption. As a whole, we find that Co-anti-MXenes can act as promising anode materials for alkali metal ion batteries.