Considerate instability factors in mono and divalent metal ion batteries: from fundamentals to approaches

The ever-growing global population, energy scarcity worries, and climate change encourage scientists to explore eco-friendly, and cost-effective energy sources. Energy storage systems, more especially chemistries based on electrochemical reactions such as Li-ion batteries (LIBs), are recognized as one of the greatest effective means of connecting clean energy sources to electrical power grids among the many forms of renewable energy resources, including wind, solar, and wave powers. Regrettably, demand for large-scale commercialization of LIBs tackles serious matters mostly owing to the lack of lithium in the earth. Burgeoning lithium-free batteries such as mono and divalent metal ion batteries (Na-ion batteries (NIBs), K-ion batteries (KIBs), Mg-ion batteries (MIBs), and Ca-ion batteries (CIBs)) could be a suitable candidate for the existing LIBs technology, especially in terms of economics, energy density, and accessibility. With all their advantages such as high ionic conductivity and transference number, quick diffusion for NIBs and KIBs, and high volumetric and gravimetric capacities in CIBs and MIBs, alkali and alkaline-based batteries are very reactive and show low mechanical stability during the charge-discharge process. Therefore, to ease the readers in comparing the differences between mono and divalent metal ion batteries with lithium metal batteries, this review aims to scrutinize the fundamental challenges related to stability issues of electrode-electrolyte interphases (EEIs) in terms of the chemistry and formation mechanism to comprehend the origin of failures in mono and divalent metal-ion batteries. Also, the main instability matters in each part of the mono and divalent metal-ion battery and recent design strategies exploited to improve battery performance are discussed.