Micron iron oxide particles with thickness-controllable carbon coating for Ni-Fe battery

Coating actives with carbon is an effective way to improve the performance of Ni Fe battery, and relevant study has focused on the nanoFe/FeOx, while the micron particles used in the industry have been usually ignored. Herein, we achieve the uniform and thickness-controllable carbon coating for the micron-sized dodecahedral Fe3O4, and study the influence of the carbon thickness on the performance of the Fe anode in details. As a result, capacity, rate performance and stability are improved with the increase of carbon coating because of lower charge-transfer resistance and more complete structure. However, for the first plateau (Fe0→Fe2+) which is typically applied in the industry, the improvement of the carbon coating is limited with the thickness of the carbon, owing to insufficient impact of mitigating passivation. For the second and third plateaus (Fe2+→Fe3+), with the increase of the carbon coating, the capacity and rate performance are both markedly improved because a more completed structure can better promise the conductivity. As the thickness of the carbon coating is 20 nm, the electrode exhibits 141 mAh g−1 at a high current density of 36 A g−1. These results are of great significance to the development of industrial Ni-Fe battery.