Sol-Gel Synthesized Antimony Anodes for Sodium-Ion Batteries: Identifying Key Parameters for Optimization

The potentially high gravimetric capacities of intermetallic anodes, coupled with the low cost and readily available materials used in sodium-ion batteries, has generated interest in antimony—an anode capable of alloying with sodium. However, presently there are few synthetic routes to antimony particles for use in sodium-ion batteries. One pot, sol-gel synthetic routes from readily available, chloride-free precursors have been developed. The resulting products have been characterized and, from this data, several key parameters’ optimization have been identified and are presented here. Finally, using this information, some initial optimization has been carried out, which resulted in minor improvements to the physical and electrochemical properties of the resulting product.