The potential of plasma-derived hard carbon for sodium-ion batteries

Sodium-ion batteries (SIB) are receiving wider attention due to sodium abundance and lower cost. The application of hard carbon to SIB electrodes has shown their significant potential to increase rates, capacities, stability, and overall performance. This article describes the significance of hard carbon, its structural models, and mechanisms for SIB applications. Further, this work unveils the potential of plasma methods as a scalable and sustainable manufacturing source of hard carbon to meet its increasing industrial demands for energy storage applications. The working mechanisms of major plasma technologies, the influence of their parameters on carbon structure, and their suitability for SIB applications are described. This work summarises the performance of emerging plasma-driven hard carbon solutions for SIB, including extreme environments, and revolves around the flexibilities offered by plasma methods in a wider spectrum such as multi-materials doping, in-situ multilayer fabrication, and a broad range of formulations and environments to deposit hard carbon-based electrodes for superior SIB performance. It is conceived the challenges around the stable interface, capacity fading, and uplifting SIB capacities and rates at higher voltage are currently being researched, Whereas, the development of real-time monitoring and robust diagnostic tools for SIB are new horizons. This work proposes a data-driven framework for plasma-driven hard carbon to make high-performance energy storage batteries.