Electrochemical Preparation of MoS2 Intercalated Compound with Micron Size for Magnesium-Ion Storage

The micro-sized MoS2 intercalated compound with the intercalant of 1-butyl-3-methyl-imidazolium cation (BMIM+) was prepared by a simple electrochemical method and used as cathode material of magnesium ion batteries. The MoS2 intercalated compound (denoted as MoS2 - BMIM+) has an expanded interlayer spacing of 0.98 nm, which effectively reduced the insertion/extraction barrier of Mg2+ and provided abundant active sites for Mg2+ intercalation. Therefore, the MoS2-BMIM+ deliverd a significantly improved charging capacity (101.93 mAh . g(-1) at 20 mA . g(-1), about 4 times as much as bulk MoS2) and a good rate performance. We further show that this method can also be applied for the intercalation of 1-butyl-1-methylpyrrolidinium cation (Pyr(14)(+)), which showed an interlayer spacing of 1.04 nm.