Search

Effective selective recycling of spent lithium‐ion batteries (S‐LIBs) and giving recycled products a "second life" are crucial for advancing energy supply circularity, environmental and economic sustainability development. However, separating metal compounds with similar charge differences requires substantial energy, water, and chemical inputs. Herein, an innovative strategy is present for selective recycling S‐LIBs by photoexcitation inspired by the Hard Soft Acid Base (HSAB) principle. Theoretical calculations and experimental results show that photoexcitation drives charge transfer and modulates subtle charge density differences among metal components, thereby enhancing their solubility disparity and facilitating metal separation. Remarkably, the photoexcitation‐induced metal separation factor reaches 46900 and the metal recovery efficiency approaches 100%, representing a significant improvement over non‐photoexcitation separation with a separation factor of non‐photoexcitation of merely 2.7. Through techno‐economic analysis, the viability of photoexcitation selective recycling technology has been confirmed as an eco‐friendly and economical approach for battery recycling. Furthermore, high‐value reuse of recovered Mn components is implemented. The Recycled Mn components are treated by calcination to obtain porous, defect‐rich Mn2O3, which showed a specific capacity of 613 mAh g−1 at 0.1 A g−1) in aqueous Zn‐ion batteries (AZIBs). This work provides fresh insight into recycling S‐LIBs and moving toward more sustainable storage technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sodium-ion batteries (SIBs) are promising candidates for large-scale energy storage due to the abundance and low cost of sodium. However, graphite, the primary anode for commercial lithium-ion batteries, cannot be applied to SIBs. Its two-dimensional (2D) counterpart graphene is also inactive toward Na ions because of the delocalized π-electron network. We propose an idea to tackle this problem by introducing kagome topology into the honeycomb lattice, creating localized electronic states for improving the Na storage performance. Herein, we design a form of 2D carbon allotrope (named FSL-graphene), consisting of a kagome and a honeycomb sublattice. It has excellent stability, which is confirmed by the superior cohesive energy, positive phonon modes, high thermal stability, and strong mechanical stability. FSL-graphene exhibits an ultra-high theoretical Na storage capacity of 3347.1 mA h g−1, superior to most previously reported 2D anode materials. In addition, it possesses low diffusion energy barriers (0.19–0.23 eV), low open-circuit voltages (0.59–0.61 V), and small changes in lattice constants (1.3%). Furthermore, the electrolytes with high dielectric constants (e.g., ethylene carbonate) could improve the adsorption and migration of Na on FSL-graphene. This study provides an insight for designing high-performance carbon anode materials for SIBs by focusing on the topological lattices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]