Inspired cheese-like biomass-derived carbon with plentiful heteroatoms for high performance energy storage

• Published in: Journal of materials science. Materials in electronics Vol. 30; no. 7; pp. 6583 - 6592
• Main Authors: Liu, Yongchao, Shi, Minjie, Yan, Chao, Zhuo, Qiqi, Wu, Hanzhao, Wang, Lei, Liu, Hu, Guo, Zhanhu
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer US 01.04.2019; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Albumen; Biomass; Biomass energy production; Carbon; Characterization and Evaluation of Materials; Charge efficiency; Charge transfer; Charge transport; Cheese; Chemistry and Materials Science; Electrodes; Energy storage; Ion transport; Lithium; Lithium-ion batteries; Materials Science; Optical and Electronic Materials; Rechargeable batteries
• ISSN: 0957-4522; 1573-482X
• DOI: 10.1007/s10854-019-00965-2

Directional construction of high performance carbon electrode from biomass plays a critical role in the development of energy storage devices. Herein, a straightforward and scalable route is reported to develop a cheese-like biomass-derived carbon electrode with plentiful heteroatoms for sodium-ion batteries and lithium-ion batteries by using egg white as a precursor. The resultant cheese-like structure provides more ion transport channels, shorter ion transport distance and increased charge transfer efficiency. At the same time, the self-doping by heteroatoms could offer high electronic conductivity and rich active sites. Benefited from the reasonable arrangement, the as-prepared electrode exhibits significantly enhanced sodium storage properties including highly reversible capacity (226.8 mA h g −1 at 100 mA g −1 ), superior rate capability and excellent capacity retention (92.8%). It also shows great lithium ion capacity (567.5 mA h g −1 after 80 cycles at 100 mA g −1 ), fine rate capability and outstanding capacity retention (104.8%). This work could shed light on the effective and scalable preparation of biomass-derived carbon for efficient energy storage applications.