Inside the failure mechanism of tin oxide as anode for sodium ion batteries

The conversion-alloying compounds have been identified as promising anode materials for sodium ion batteries (SIBs). One of
them, SnO2, with an enormous theoretical capacity of 1558 mAh g−1 is an interesting candidate, also due to its low cost,
environmental friendliness and wide availability of tin. However, many drawbacks limit its application in commercial batteries.
In this paper, SnO2 has been synthesized from cheap reagents by using simple and easily scalable coprecipitation synthesis routes
obtaining nanoparticles with sizes between 2 and 14 nm with almost spherical morphologies. The reasons of the failure of the
alloying/de-alloying process were investigated by combining the results obtained from common electrochemical techniques,
providing useful examples for the investigation of every material with analogous electrochemical features. Thanks to cyclic
voltammetry, different reaction paths were detected for the two samples. The first cycle irreversibility was well characterized with
electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, showing interesting trends in the values of the resistance. Galvanostatic cycling with
potential limitations was employed to quantify the irreversibility, finding out that the most crystalline sample reached the terminal
phase in the Sn-Na system (Na15Sn4), while the least crystalline sample could not achieve such a result (Na3Sn). The crystallinity
of SnO2 was determined to be a key parameter, often neglected, for the realization of satisfactory anode compounds.