Accordion-Like Carbon with High Nitrogen Doping for Fast and Stable K Ion Storage

Potassium ion battery (PIB) is a potential candidate for future large-scale energy storage. A key challenge is that the (de)potassiation stability of graphitic carbon anodes is hampered by the limited (002) interlayer spacing. Amorphous carbon with a hierarchical structure can buffer the volume change during repeated (de)potassiation and enable stable cycling. Herein, a direct pyrolysis approach is demonstrated to synthesize a highly nitrogen-doped (26.7 at.%) accordion-like carbon anode composed of thin carbon nanosheets and a turbostratic crystalline structure. The hierarchical structure of accordion-like carbon is endowed by a self-assembly process during pyrolysis carbonization. The hierarchical nitrogen-doped accordion structure enables a high reversible capacity of 346 mAh g−1 and superior cycling stability. This work constitutes a general synthesis methodology that can be used to prepare hierarchical carbon anodes for advanced PIBs.

Citation

Zhang, W., Sun, M., Yin, J., Lu, K., Schwingenschlögl, U., Qiu, X., & Alshareef, H. N. (2021). Accordion-Like Carbon with High Nitrogen Doping for Fast and Stable K Ion Storage. Advanced Energy Materials, 2101928. doi:10.1002/aenm.202101928

Sponsors

W.L.Z., M.L.S., and J.Y. contributed equally to this work. The authors acknowledge the financial support from King Abdullah University of Technology (KAUST), the financial support from the National Key Research and Development Plan (NO. 2018YFB1501503), the Research and Development Program in Key Fields of Guangdong Province (NO. 2020B1111380002), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 22108044). W.L.Z. acknowledges the financial support from the Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Plant Resources Biorefinery (No. 2021GDKLPRB07, No. 2021GDKLPRB-K06).