Bismuth oxychloride anchoring on graphene nanosheets as anode with a high relative energy density for potassium ion battery

In this work, we developed bismuth oxychloride anchoring on graphene nanosheets (BiOCl/G) composite via a simple one-step hydrothermal process for KIBs’ anode, which delivers a high reversible specific capacity of 251 mAh g⁻¹ at 50 mA g⁻¹ after 50 cycles. Meanwhile, our BiOCl/G composite also exhibits a low voltage plateau during potassiation-depotassiation process, and such low voltage plateau in anode is helpful to improve the energy density of the full battery. In addition, we also provide the energy changes for migration of K-ion of our composite according to the density functional theory calculation and the result shows that the introduction of graphene in BiOCl can reduce the adsorption energy variation, which is in favor of K-ion intercalation process. In consideration of low potential plateau of our composite, we also introduce a new evaluation method, relative energy density (E_R), which not only includes the specific capacity, but also combines the potential plateau of the anode materials during potassiation-depotassiation process. According to the calculation, our BiOCl/G composite obtain an ultra-high E_R of 541 Wh kg⁻¹ at 50 mA g⁻¹ after 50 cycles with a relative energy conversion efficiency of 81%.