Plating and stripping calcium in an organic electrolyte

There is considerable interest in multivalent cation batteries, such as those based on magnesium, calcium or aluminium. Most attention has focused on magnesium. In all cases the metal anode represents a significant challenge. Recent work has shown that calcium can be plated and stripped, but only at elevated temperatures, 75 to 100 °C, with small capacities, typically 0.165 mAh cm^-2, and accompanied by significant side reactions. Here we demonstrate that calcium can be plated and stripped at room temperature with capacities of 1 mAh cm^-2 at a rate of 1 mA cm^-2, with low polarization (∼100 mV) and in excess of 50 cycles. The dominant product is calcium, accompanied by a small amount of CaH₂ that forms by reaction between the deposited calcium and the electrolyte, Ca(BH₄)₂ in tetrahydrofuran (THF). This occurs in preference to the reactions which take place in most electrolyte solutions forming CaCO₃, Ca(OH)₂ and calcium alkoxides, and normally terminate the electrochemistry. The CaH₂ protects the calcium metal at open circuit. Although this work does not solve all the problems of calcium as an anode in calcium-ion batteries, it does demonstrate that significant quantities of calcium can be plated and stripped at room temperature with low polarization.