Octahedral/Tetrahedral Vacancies in Fe₃O₄ as K‐Storage Sites: A Case of Anti‐Spinel Structure Material Serving as High‐Performance Anodes for PIBs

Abstract

Abstract Potassium‐ion batteries (PIBs) have attracted more and more attention as viable alternatives to lithium‐ion batteries (LIBs) due to the deficiency and uneven distribution of lithium resources. However, it is shown that potassium storage in some compounds through reaction or intercalation mechanisms cannot effectively improve the capacity and stability of anodes for PIBs. The unique anti‐spinel structure of magnetite (Fe 3 O 4 ) is densely packed with thirty‐two O atoms to form a face‐centered cubic (fcc) unit cell with tetrahedral/octahedral vacancies in the O‐closed packing structure, which can serve as K + storage sites according to the density functional theory (DFT) calculation results. In this work, carbon‐coated Fe 3 O 4 @C nanoparticles are prepared as high‐performance anodes for PIBs, which exhibit high reversible capacity (638 mAh g −1 at 0.05 A g −1 ) and hyper stable cycling performance at ultrahigh current density (150 mAh g −1 after 9000 cycles at 10 A g −1 ). In situ XRD, ex‐situ Fe K‐edge XAFS, and DFT calculations confirm the storage of K + in tetrahedral/octahedral vacancies.