Topic: Materials Innovation for Advanced Sodium Batteries

This Special Issue explores recent advances in sodium batteries to promote their practical development, highlighting emerging trends, identifying research gaps, and providing insights into future directions. The Special Issue is anticipated to serve as a platform for bringing together materials scientists, chemists, physicists, and engineers from diverse backgrounds to exchange knowledge and foster innovation, thereby accelerating the development of sodium batteries.

Introduction 

Sodium-based batteries have attracted significant interest due to the abundance and low cost of sodium resources. They are considered a promising complementary technology to lithium-ion batteries, particularly for stationary energy storage and short-range electric vehicles. Although substantial progress has been made in their development and commercialization is underway, the electrochemical performance of sodium batteries—such as energy density and cycle life—still requires improvement to remain competitive with lithium-ion technologies. In addition, challenges related to interfacial stability and structural degradation continue to limit their large-scale deployment, underscoring the urgent need for innovative material design and advanced characterization strategies.

This Special Issue aims to explore recent advances in sodium batteries, including anode and cathode materials, electrolytes (both liquid and solid-state), binder, separator, electrode/electrolyte interfaces, electrochemical mechanisms, advanced characterization, theoretical modeling, fabrication techniques, battery recycling, and their integration into sodium-ion, sodium-metal, sodium anode-free, and other sodium-based systems.

Scope and Topics

This Special Issue invites original research, reviews, and perspectives in the broad domain of sodium batteries. Topics include, but are not limited to:

● Anode materials;

● Cathode materials;

● Liquid electrolytes;

● Solid-state electrolytes;

● Binder and separator;

● Electrode/electrolyte interface;

● Electrochemical mechanism;

● In-situ and ex-situ characterization;

● Theoretical modeling;

● Fabrication techniques;

● Battery recycling;

● Environmental and economic analysis.

Sodium batteries, energy storage, anode, cathode, electrolyte, binder, separator, sodium metal, anode-free, recycling