High-Capacity Sb/Fe₂S₃ Sodium-Ion Battery Anodes Fabricated by a One-Step Redox Reaction, Followed by Ball Milling with Graphite

Antimony (Sb) has been considered a promising anode for sodium-ion batteries (SIBs) owing to its high theoretical capacity (660 mA h g –1 ) and low redox voltage (0.2–0.9 V vs Na + /Na). However, the capacity degradation caused by the volumetric variation during battery discharge/charge hinders the practical application. Herein, guided by the DFT calculation, Sb/Fe 2 S 3 was fabricated by annealing Fe and Sb 2 S 3 mixed powder. Next, Sb/Fe 2 S 3 was blended with 15 wt % graphite by ball milling, yielding nano-Sb/Fe 2 S 3 anchored on an exfoliated graphite composite (denoted as Sb/Fe 2 S 3 -15%). When applied as an anode of SIBs, Sb/Fe 2 S 3 -15% delivered reversible capacities of 565, 542, 467, 366, 285, and 236 mA h g –1 at current rates of 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 A g –1, respectively, surpassing most of the Sb-based anodes. The co-existence of highly conductive Fe 2 S 3 and Sb minimizes the polarization of the anode. Our experiments proved that the Sb and Fe 2 S 3 phases were reversible during discharge/charge cycling, and the exfoliated graphite can accelerate the Na + diffusion and e – conduction. The proposed synthesis method of this work can also be applicable to synthesize various antimony/transition metal sulfide heterostructures (Sb/M 1– x S), which may be applied in a series of fields.