Deintercalation kinetics

Apart from the work toward practical lithium batteries, two new areas of theoretical electrochemistry research were initiated in this context. The first is the mechanism of passivation of highly active metals (such as lithium) in solutions involving organic solvents and strong inorganic oxidizers (such as thionyl chloride). The creation of lithium power sources has only been possible because of the specific character of lithium passivation. The second area is the thermodynamics, mechanism, and kinetics of electrochemical incorporation (intercalation and deintercalation) of various ions into matrix structures of various solid compounds. In most lithium power sources, such processes occur at the positive electrode, but in some of them they occur at the negative electrode as well. 

Chemical relaxation methods can be used to determine mechanisms of reactions of ions at the mineral/water interface. In this paper, a review of chemical relaxation studies of adsorption/desorption kinetics of inorganic ions at the metal oxide/aqueous interface is presented. Plausible mechanisms based on the triple layer surface complexation model are discussed. Relaxation kinetic studies of the intercalation/ deintercalation of organic and inorganic ions in layered, cage-structured, and channel-structured minerals are also reviewed. In the intercalation studies, plausible mechanisms based on ion-exchange and adsorption/desorption reactions are presented steric and chemical properties of the solute and interlayered compounds are shown to influence the reaction rates. We also discuss the elementary reaction steps which are important in the stereoselective and reactive properties of interlayered compounds. 

The fast reactions of ions between aqueous and mineral phases have been studied extensively in a variety of fields including colloidal chemistry, geochemistry, environmental engineering, soil science, and catalysis (1-6). Various experimental approaches and techniques have been utilized to address the questions of interest in any given field as this volume exemplifies. Recently, chemical relaxation techniques have been applied to study the kinetics of interaction of ions with minerals in aqueous suspension (2). These methods allow mechanistic information to be obtained for elementary processes which occur rapidly, e.g., for processes which occur within seconds to as fast as nanoseconds (j0. Many important phenomena can be studied including adsorption/desorption reactions of ions at electri fied interfaces and intercalation/deintercalation of ions with minerals having unique interlayer structure. 

The particle size of the cathode material plays a very important role in their electrochemical behavior [113]. Smaller particles provide the performance of the heterogeneous reaction of intercalation/deintercalation in the kinetic regime. One of the problem is to enhance electronic conductivity of cathode materials. In this case, electronic additives (e.g., carbon) could be excluded. 

In this respect, this chapter details the fundamentals and most important advances in the research activities on lithium intercalation into and deintercalation from transition metals oxides and carbonaceous materials, especially from thermodynamic and kinetic points of view, including methodological overviews. The thermodynamics of lithium intercalation/deintercalation is first introduced with respect to a lattice gas model with various approximations, after which the kinetics of lithium intercalation/deintercalation are described in terms of a cell-impedance-controlled model. Finally, some experimental methods which have been widely used to explore the thermodynamics and kinetics of lithium intercalation/deintercalation are briefly overviewed. 

Now, we can consider the kinetics of lithium intercalation/deintercalation of amorphous carbon electrodes having different lithium intercalation sites, as compared to graphite electrode in terms of cell-impedance-controlled lithium transport. 

Pyun etal. [18,82-84] have suggested that this abnormal behavior in CTs involving the inflexion point could be reasonably explained in terms of the difference in the kinetics of lithium deintercalation from two different lithium deintercalation sites having different activation energies for lithium deintercalation. The McNabb-Foster equation [101, 102] was modified to satisfy spherical symmetry and to represent the coexistence of two different types of trap site, and was also used as a governing... 

In this chapter we have summarized the fundamentals and recent advances in thermodynamic and kinetic approaches to lithium intercalation into, and deintercalation from, transition metals oxides and carbonaceous materials, and have also provided an overview of the major experimental techniques. First, the thermodynamics oflithium intercalation/deintercalation based on the lattice gas model with various approximations was analyzed. Lithium intercalation/deintercalation involving phase transformations, such as order-disorder transition or two-phase coexistence caused by strong interaction oflithium ions in the solid electrode, was clearly explained based on the lattice gas model, with the aid of computational methods. 

The chapter then detailed the kinetics of lithium intercalation/deintercalation... 

Finally, a brief overview was presented of important experimental approaches, including GITT, EMF-temperature measurement, EIS and PCT, for investigating lithium intercalation/deintercalation. In this way, it is possible to determine - on an experimental basis - thermodynamic properties such as electrode potential, chemical potential, enthalpy and entropy, as well as kinetic parameters such as the diffusion coefficients of lithium ion in the solid electrode. The PCT technique, when aided by computational methods, represents the most powerful tool for determining the kinetics of lithium intercalation/deintercalation when lithium transport cannot be simply explained based on a conventional, diffusion-controlled model. 

Because deintercalation is slow, it may be hard to distinguish between kinetically hindered deintercalation and a true residue compound in equilibrium. 

The most frequent method for the analysis of CTs from intercalation electrodes is based on the grounds that lithium diffusion in the electrode is the rate-determining process in lithium intercalation/deintercalation. " This involves the following the system is so kinetically fast that the equilibrium concentration of lithium is quickly reached at the interface... 

In this case a potassium-graphite (KCg) electrode has been used as the carbonaceous anode material. Upon anodic polarisation this electrode irreversibly deintercalates potassimn resulting in a graphite-like compound, which on subsequent cycles performs with fast kinetics of its lithium intercalation-deintercalation process [89, 90]. Accordingly, the first charging process of the battery may be written as shown in Equation 7.7 at the anode. 

The kinetics of intercalation and deintercalation of alkali metal ions were investigated in pressure-jump experiments while monitoring the electrical conductivity of the samples (32). These studies indicate biphasic kinetics whose magnitudes are in milliseconds the rates of the fast and slow components increased with increased concentrations of the metal ions. The forward and reverse rates depend on the interlayer distances, and the fast and slow components have been attributed to the ingress of ions into the galleries and interlayer diffusion, respectively. Similar biphasic kinetics on millisecond-second time scales were also observed in pressure-jump experiments for the deprotonation-reprotonation of a-ZrP (33). In the latter case, the slow and fast components have been attributed to deprotonation from the surface and from the interlayer regions of the solid, respectively. 

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