Electrodeposition of atmosphere-sensitive ternary sodium transition metal oxide films for sodium-based electrochemical energy storage Arghya Patra1,2,3, Jerome Davis III2,3, Saran Pidaparthy1,2, Manohar H. Karigerasi1,2, Beniamin Zahiri1,2,3, Ashish A. Kulkarni1,2,3, Michael A. Caple1,2,3, Daniel P. Shoemaker1,2, Jian Min Zuo1,2, Paul V. Braun1,2,3,4* 1Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Illinois 61801, USA 2Materials Research Laboratory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Illinois 61801, USA 3Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign, Illinois 61801, USA 4Department of Chemistry, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Illinois 61801, USA *Paul V. Braun Email:
[email protected] Abstract We introduce an intermediate temperature (350°C) dry molten sodium hydroxide mediated binder-free electrodeposition process to grow the previously electrochemically inaccessible air and moisture sensitive layered sodium transition metal oxides, NaxMO2 (M=Co, Mn, Ni, Fe), in both thin and thick film form, compounds which are conventionally synthesized in powder form by solid state reactions at temperatures ≥ 700°C. As a key motivation for this work, several of these oxides are of interest as cathode materials for emerging sodium-ion-based electrochemical energy storage systems. Despite the low synthesis temperature and short reaction times, our electrodeposited oxides retain the key structural and electrochemical performance observed in high temperature bulk synthesized materials. We demonstrate that tens of microns thick >75% dense NaxCoO2 and NaxMnO2 can be deposited in under an hour. When used as cathodes for sodium-ion batteries these materials exhibit near theoretical gravimetric capacities, chemical diffusion coefficients of Na+ ions (~10-12 cm2s-1), and high reversible areal capacities in the range ~0.25-0.76 mAhcm-2, values significantly higher than those reported for binder-free sodium cathodes deposited by other techniques.