Iron fumarate as large-capacity and long-life anode material for Li-ion battery boosted by conductive Fe2P decorating

Abstract Due to the always accompanied huge volume change during cycling, it is still a great challenge to achieve stable large-capacity anode for Li-ion battery. Herein, iron fumarate has been exploited as a novel and promising anode material, which has the inherent advantages of low cost and eco-friendliness. During charge-discharge cycling, the flexible organic fumarate ligands act as high-efficient buffer materials to accommodate the volume change of Fe-based active species. Through in-situ conductive Fe2P decorating, the bulk electronic conductivity of the iron fumarate-based anode material can be effectively improved to achieve fast electrochemical response. Consequently, the iron fumarate-based anode material shows excellent structure stability with a capacity fading as low as 0.03% per cycle after 1400 cycles at 3.0 A g−1 and achieves superior rate performance with a high capacity of 520 mAh g−1 at 8.0 A g−1. This study suggests that iron fumarate is a potential anode material for large-scale applications.