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Plating and stripping calcium in an organic electrolyte

Nature Materials volume 17, pages 16–20 (2018)Cite this article

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Abstract

There is considerable interest in multivalent cation batteries, such as those based on magnesium, calcium or aluminium1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11. Most attention has focused on magnesium. In all cases the metal anode represents a significant challenge. Recent work has shown that calcium can be plated and stripped, but only at elevated temperatures, 75 to 100 °C, with small capacities, typically 0.165 mAh cm−2, and accompanied by significant side reactions7. Here we demonstrate that calcium can be plated and stripped at room temperature with capacities of 1 mAh cm−2 at a rate of 1 mA cm−2, with low polarization (∼100 mV) and in excess of 50 cycles. The dominant product is calcium, accompanied by a small amount of CaH2 that forms by reaction between the deposited calcium and the electrolyte, Ca(BH4)2 in tetrahydrofuran (THF). This occurs in preference to the reactions which take place in most electrolyte solutions forming CaCO3, Ca(OH)2 and calcium alkoxides, and normally terminate the electrochemistry. The CaH2 protects the calcium metal at open circuit. Although this work does not solve all the problems of calcium as an anode in calcium-ion batteries, it does demonstrate that significant quantities of calcium can be plated and stripped at room temperature with low polarization.

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Figure 1: Electrochemical results of calcium plating/stripping in 1.5 M Ca(BH4)2 in THF.
Figure 2: Characterization of the product formed on calcium plating.
Figure 3: Cross-sectional images of Au electrodes at the end of calcium plating/stripping.
Figure 4: Accumulation of CaH2 on deposited electrode.

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Acknowledgements

P.G.B. is indebted to the EPSRC for financial support, including the Supergen Energy Storage grant. We acknowledge G. Llewellyn and J. Wickens for the GC–MS experiments.

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  1. Da Wang and Xiangwen Gao: These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departments of Materials and Chemistry, University of Oxford, Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PH, UK

    Da Wang, Xiangwen Gao, Yuhui Chen, Liyu Jin, Christian Kuss & Peter G. Bruce

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  1. Da Wang
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Contributions

D.W. and X.G. designed experiments and performed electrochemical studies and characterization. D.W., X.G., Y.C., L.J., C.K. and P.G.B. analysed and interpreted the data. P.G.B. wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Peter G. Bruce.

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Wang, D., Gao, X., Chen, Y. et al. Plating and stripping calcium in an organic electrolyte. Nature Mater 17, 16–20 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat5036

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