Nanoconfined Iron Oxychloride Material as a High-Performance Cathode for Rechargeable Chloride Ion Batteries

As a group of attractive photoelectromagnetic and catalytic functional materials, metal oxychlorides have been attracting attention for electrochemical energy storage in rechargeable chloride ion battery (CIB) systems recently. Their application, however, is limited by the complicated synthesis and/or poor cycling stability. Herein, a facile strategy using vacuum impregnation and subsequent thermal decomposition at mild conditions has been developed to synthesize the FeOCl/CMK-3 nanocomposite material. Benefiting from the nanoconfined structure, a high-performance FeOCl/CMK-3 cathode, which has a high discharge capacity of 202 mAh g^-1, superior cycling stability, and significantly improved charge transfer and chloride ion diffusion, is achieved. The electrolyte component is found to show a high affinity with the chlorine layer in the FeOCl phase, inducing evident expansion of the FeOCl layers along the b-axis direction and thus boosting a new potential liquid exfoliation approach for preparing 2D FeOCl material. Importantly, reversible electrochemical reactions of the FeOCl cathode material based on the redox reactions of iron species and chloride ion transfer are revealed.