Electrochemical Rubidium Storage Behavior of Graphite in Ionic Liquid Electrolyte

Electrochemical intercalation behaviors of alkali metals into graphite have been vigorously studied in academic and industrial fields, whereas their mechanisms are still unclarified. In this study, we report a novel rubidium-ion battery utilizing an ionic liquid electrolyte and natural graphite as the negative electrode material operating at room temperature. The electrochemical phase evolution behavior of rubidium-graphite intercalation compounds was elucidated using X-ray diffraction. The graphite negative electrode exhibited an initial discharge capacity of 216 mAh g-1 at 0.05 C rate, and retained its capacities of around 180 mAh g-1 even at 0.5 C rate for 50 cycles. Electrochemical Rb-GIC formation Rb+ Graphite electrode Intercalation Deintercalation Rb[FTA]-[C4C1pyrr][FTA] ionic liquid Graphite RbC8 Intensity RbC8 RbC24 Gr RbC24 RbC8 10 20 30 40 2 theta / deg. (Cu-K alpha) Pristine (Graphite) Charging Full-charged (RbC8) Discharging (c) The Author(s) 2022. Published by ECSJ. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License (CC BY-NC-SA, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/), which permits non-commercial reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium by share-alike, provided the original work is properly cited. For permission for commercial reuse, please email to the corresponding author. [DOI: 10.5796/electrochemistry.22-00122].

Automated summary

In this study, a novel rubidium-ion battery was developed using an ionic liquid electrolyte and natural graphite as the negative electrode material at room temperature. The X-ray diffraction technique was employed to investigate the electrochemical phase evolution behavior of rubidium-graphite intercalation compounds. The graphite negative electrode exhibited an initial discharge capacity of 216 mAh g-1 at 0.05 C rate and retained capacities of around 180 mAh g-1 even after 50 cycles at 0.5 C rate.