Transitioning beyond the horizon of prevailing LIBs to avoid ‘driving range anxiety’ and thereby contending with traditional combustion engine vehicles in terms of driving range per charge demands the exploration of novel chemistries and materials. high current density, ≥2 C, the symbol ‘C’ represents the current rate used for cycling rechargeable batteries, xC refers to the current required to fully charge/discharge the battery in 1/ x h), and cost (<125 US$ kWh −1, expected in 2022) at the cell level, are urgently required 12, 13. This implies that to stimulate EV market penetration, improvements, mainly including specific energy and energy density (>400 Wh kg −1 and > 800 Wh L −1) to enable long-range driving (>500 km), rate capability (i.e. However, despite the striking growth in sales of LIBs worldwide, the practical specific energy of contemporary commercial LIBs (~250 Wh kg −1 based on a Gr||lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide (NMC) cell) is not adequate to achieve the stringent requirements of next-generation batteries 6. Within this share, the automotive end-use industry is predicted to lead the overall mass market due to an increasing interest in EVs ( ) 11. They are responsible for 63% of worldwide battery sales with an estimated global market value of US$ 213.5 billion by 2020 10.

Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) utilising graphite (Gr) as the anode and lithium cobalt oxide (LiCoO 2, LCO) as the cathode have subjugated the battery market since their commercialisation by Sony in the 1990s 8, 9.

Incentivised by the ever-increasing markets for electro-mobility and the efficient deployment of renewable energy sources, there is a large demand for high-energy electrochemical energy storage devices 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.

Anode vs cathode battery