The electrochemistry of silver hollandite nanorods, Ag_xMn ₈O₁₆: Enhancement of electrochemical battery performance via dimensional and compositional control

The reflux synthetic approach for silver hollandite, Ag_xMn ₈O₁₆, enabled the preparation of pure silver hollandite over a range of silver (x) content, 1.0 ≤ x ≤ 1.8. It was demonstrated that the crystallite size increased along with the silver content in the product. This finding led to the ability to synthetically control material properties enabling the systematic exploration of the electrochemistry of silver hollandite at a variety of crystallite sizes. Results from battery electrochemical testing, including constant current discharge, pulse testing, Galvanostatic Intermittent Titration Type Testing and cycle testing, are reported herein where all tests demonstrated improved performance of the smaller crystallite materials relative to the larger crystallite materials. Notably, a 5 fold decrease in calculated DC cell resistance and a doubling of the delivered capacity as a result of crystallite size reduction were demonstrated. Overall, these results illustrate an important paradigm in battery electrochemistry, that the electrochemistry of active electrode materials can be positively affected and controlled by variation in crystal size.