Magnetic stirring assisted hydrothermal synthesis of Na3MnCO3PO4 cathode material for sodium-ion battery

Abstract Na3MnCO3PO4 (NMCP) is considered one of the promising cathode materials for sodium-ion batteries due to its high theoretical capacity. The hydrothermal method is an efficient, environmental-friendly, and simple route with low instrument cost to prepare active cathode materials such as NMCP. In this research, magnetic stirring was applied to promote the hydrothermal synthesis, and NMCP was produced by controlling different stirring times. This method results in the formation of pure NMCP upon only 45 min processing time. According to the ICP results, the Na to Mn ratio in the NMCP approached the stoichiometric value of 3 by prolonging the stirring time. By analyzing the charge-discharge behavior of the NMCP materials synthesized through different reaction times, it was found that the NMCP produced at 120 C for 480 min had the highest discharge capacity of 94 mAh g−1, which was resulted from the increased Na to Mn ratio of 2.51. Besides, using Avrami's model, a kinetic equation was proposed for the particles' formation under the stirring hydrothermal process at 120 C. Stirring the solution during the hydrothermal synthesis offers a fast, scalable and eco-friendly way of producing better performing NMCP cathodes with uniform morphological characteristics for sodium-ion batteries.