Octahedral Sb2O3 as high-performance anode for lithium and sodium storage

Among a succession of promising electrode materials of post-transition metal oxides, Sb2O3 has drawn growing attention on energy storage field owing to its high theoretical capacity and abundant resources. Nevertheless, the inherent flaw of serious volume variation during the process of ion insertion/desertion greatly hinders the application of Sb2O3 in energy storage system. Therefore, an octahedral Sb2O3 is prepared via facile and low cost approach as anode materials for lithium-ion batteries and sodium-ion batteries. Such obtained octahedral Sb2O3 composite exhibits high specific charge capacity of 640.8 mA h g(-1) at a current density of 0.2 A g(-1) after 50 cycles in lithium-ion batteries. Due to the excellent electrochemical properties for lithium ions storage, the obtained octahedral Sb2O3 is further studied on sodium ions storage. And the electrode delivers a specific charge capacity of 435.6 mA h g(-1) at a current density of 0.1 A g(-1) after 50 cycles. Briefly, this work could open up a new method to use Sb2O3 as rechargeable anode materials in scalable application and offer a reference for the development of antimony compounds in energy storage domain.