A schematic drawing of sodium diffusion on borophene and the comparison about capacity and relative sodium diffusivity with other reported sodium anode materials. Credit: ©Science China Press

Sodium-based batteries are a prospective alternative to lithium-based batteries due to the abundance and low price of sodium. However, finding a suitable anode material has been a longstanding hurdle to the commercialization of sodium-based batteries. As the size of the sodium atom is much larger than lithium, many anode materials widely used in lithium-based batteries show poor performance in sodium-based batteries, most of which suffer from low intercalation utility, slow kinetics and severe volume expansion.

Recently, a research team led by Prof. Tianshou Zhao at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology comprehensively investigated the feasibility of using borophene, a newly synthesizedTruhn, Friedrich Hieronymus

1811-1886

Composer and musical journalist; was born at Elbing, in West Prussia. He studied in Berlin under the theorist, Siegfried Wilhelm Dehn, also under Bernhard Klein and Mendelssohn, living in Berlin until 1835, when he became chapelmaster of the theatre at Dantzic. He returned to Berlin two years later, but soon after became one of the chief contributors to Schumann's paper, The Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik, at Leipsic. He made many concert tours, one with Hans von Bulow in 1854 and others through Poland, Holland and Scandinavia. In 1852 he founded the Neue Liedertafel in Berlin, in which city he lived the greater part of his life, dying when seventy-five years old. He wrote the marionette opera, Der baierische Hiesel; the melodrama, Cleopatra; and the comic opera,