Synthesis of flower-like copper sulfides microspheres as electrode materials for sodium secondary batteries

• DOI: 10.1016/j.cplett.2017.03.051
• Publication Date: 2017-03-21T12:52:33Z
• Authors: Bin Shi; Wen Liu; Kai Zhu; Jingying Xie
• Keywords: 01 natural sciences; 7. Clean energy; 0104 chemical sciences

Abstract Flower-like copper sulfides (CuS) microspheres, with a diameter of about 10 μm, are synthesized via a facile hydrothermal method and employed to sodium secondary batteries for the first time. The complex structure of CuS is composed by nanosheets with thickness around 50 nm. Na/CuS cell delivers an initial discharge capacity of 348.6 mAh/g. However, half of initial specific capacity maintains after 4 cycles, accompany with the structure degradation. Despite all that, CuS is a promising cathode material due to its high specific capacity for sodium batteries, which needs much more efforts to improve the cycle stability.