(July 3, 2018) The Lin Lab has recently published a study on sodium ion batteries titled “Empowering multicomponent cathode materials for sodium ion batteries by exploring three-dimensional compositional heterogeneities” in the high-impact journal Energy & Environmental Science. This work, rather than adopting the traditional route of synthesizing cathode materials with homogeneous chemical distribution, presents a counterintuitive pathway to design high performance cathode materials with high compositional heterogeneities. The resulting material delivered superior performance and did not suffer any significant capacity fading upon long-term cycling. The work has opened up plenty of room for further improvement of cathode materials for sodium ion batteries following the same design principle and thus, will help a long way to establish cheaper and more sustainable sodium ion batteries as an alternative to commercial lithium ion batteries. The work was driven forward by Prof. Feng Lin’s Ph.D. student Muhammad Mominur Rahman and was supported by postdoc Dr. Linqin Mu. Read more about the article here.