Professor Soojin Park highlighted the significance of this research as a milestone for high-performance batteries, with potential applications in electric vehicles and grid-scale energy storage.

The team successfully embedded tin nanoparticles within the hard carbon matrix using the sol-gel process, which is crucial for the composite's performance.

The limitations of graphite, the standard anode material for lithium-ion batteries, such as its low capacity and slow charge/discharge rates, have driven the search for more effective alternatives.

A collaborative research team from POSTECH and KIER has developed a hard carbon-tin nano-composite aimed at enhancing battery performance for electric vehicles and energy storage systems.

This innovative composite combines hard carbon, which features a disordered structure that promotes ion diffusion, with tin nanoparticles to improve energy storage and mechanical stability.

To address the challenge of incorporating tin, which typically expands during cycling and has a low melting point, the researchers utilized a sol-gel process followed by thermal reduction to create sub-10 nm tin particles.

The new electrode design effectively overcomes the limitations of traditional graphite anodes, such as low capacity and slow charge rates, by integrating hard carbon with these tiny tin nanoparticles.

Hard carbon's microporous structure allows for rapid diffusion of lithium and sodium ions, enabling high energy storage capacity and mechanical strength.

The composite not only physically mixes these materials but also employs tin as a catalyst to promote crystallization of the hard carbon, enhancing battery capacity through reversible Sn–O bond formation.

In testing, this new anode demonstrated stable operation over 1,500 cycles under 20-minute fast-charging conditions, achieving a 1.5-fold increase in volumetric energy density compared to conventional graphite anodes.

Moreover, the hard carbon-tin composite shows promising performance in sodium-ion batteries, maintaining stability and fast kinetics despite the reactivity challenges typically associated with sodium.

The study, co-authored by Professors Soojin Park, Sungho Choi, Dong-Yeob Han at POSTECH, and Dr. Gyujin Song at KIER, was published in ACS Nano and received support from various Korean government ministries.