An intercalation compound for high-safe K metal batteries

K metal batteries, with high electrochemical performance and low-cost, hold great potential to be one of alterna-tives to lithium-ion batteries. However, the intrinsic high reactivity of K metal electrode limits their application. To enhance the safety of K metal batteries, a graphite-intercalation-compound of K (K-GIC) is prepared as an anode instead of K metal in this work. The K-GIC symmetric batteries show excellent cycling stability due to suppressing dendrite and alleviating volume expansion which are resulted from the interlayer insertion/extraction mechanism and reduced affinity energy of K. Moreover, the K-GIC compound exhibits good environmental stabil-ity in contact with air and water. Our work shows that K-GIC as an anode material may promote the application of safe and high-performance K metal batteries.

Automated summary

This study utilized a graphite-intercalation-compound of K (K-GIC) as an anode for potassium metal batteries, which effectively suppressed dendrite growth and mitigated volume expansion, leading to improved cycling stability. Additionally, the K-GIC compound exhibited good environmental stability when in contact with air and water, indicating its potential for promoting the application of safe and high-performance potassium metal batteries.