Materials and engineering endeavors towards practical sodium-ion batteries

Sodium-ion batteries are making inroads toward better acceptance by both research and industry communities as promising electrochemical energy storage systems for stationary battery applications. The extreme dedication to lithium-ion batteries, since the early 90s, has eclipsed any significant development around room temperature Na-ion batteries, despite the materials availability advantage the latter have over the Li-ion battery counterparts. Benefiting from the substantial knowledge accumulated on Li-ion batteries, tremendous progress rapidly occurred with focus on solving the fundamental issues encountered at the component, system and cost levels in Na-ion batteries. In this review, we discuss the key aspects that make Na-ion batteries enable the research of a wide spectrum of sodium-based materials and electrolytes, which further catalyzes the development of plethora of energy storage systems.