Peculiar diffusion behavior of AlCl_(4) intercalated in graphite from nanosecond-long molecular dynamics simulations

The diffusion property of the intercalated species in the graphite materials is at the heart of the rate performance of graphite-based metal-ion secondary battery.Here we study the diffusion process of a AlCl_(4) molecule within graphite—a key component of a recently reported aluminum ion battery with excellent performance—via molecular dynamics(MD)simulations.Both ab-initio MD(AIMD)and semiempirical tight-binding MD simulations show that the diffusion process of the intercalated AlCl_(4) molecule becomes rather inhomogeneous,when the simulation time exceeds approximately 100 picoseconds.Specifically,during its migration in between graphene layers,the intercalated AlCl_(4) molecule may become stagnant occasionally,and then recovers its normal(fast)diffusion behavior after halting for a while.When this phenomenon occurs,the linear relationship of the mean squared displacement(MSD)versus the duration time is not fulfilled.We interpret this peculiar behavior as a manifestation of inadequate sampling of rare event(the stagnation of the molecule),which does not yet appear in short-time MD simulations.We further check the influence of strains present in graphite intercalated compounds(GIC)on the diffusion properties of AlCl_(4),and find that their presence in general slows down the diffusion of the intercalated molecule,and is detrimental to the rate performance of the GIC-based battery.