Natural mineral compounds in energy-storage systems: Development, challenges, prospects

The energy-conversion storage systems serve as crucial roles for solving the intermittent of sustainable energy. But, the materials in the battery systems mainly come from complex chemical process, accompanying with the inevitable serious pollutions and high energy-consumption. Natural mineral resources display various merits, such as unique architecture, adsorption capability and rich active sites, which have captured numerous atten-tions with remarkable advancements. Recently, the minerals compounds, containing 1D structure (halloysites, attapulgites, sepiolite), 2D structure (montmorillonite, vermiculite, molybdenite) and 3D structure (diatomite, pyrites), have been applied in plenty of fields. Aiming at their energy-storage applications, the significant utiliza-tions in electrodes, separators, electrolyte and metal-protection were detailedly reviewed in lithium-ions battery, lithium-sulfur battery, solid-state battery and so on. However, it should be acknowledged that, the simple minerals hardly meet the demand of energy-storage systems, due to their inferior conductivity and less active substances. Thus, series of modified manners are applied for the evolution of phase (from silicate mineral to Si), the incor-porating with carbon/polymer and the tailoring of surface traits, which were in-depth discussed as following. The work was expected to summarize the traits about mineral compounds from different architectures, whilst offering significant guidelines for exploring mineral-based materials in energy-storage systems.

Automated summary

Energy-conversion storage systems play a crucial role in addressing the intermittent nature of sustainable energy. Natural mineral resources have various advantages and have been widely applied in battery systems. However, simple minerals are inadequate for energy-storage systems and require modification and adjustment.