Bacterial Cellulose–Polyaniline Composite Derived Hierarchical Nitrogen-Doped Porous Carbon Nanofibers as Anode for High-Rate Lithium-Ion Batteries

Abstract

An increasing demand for lithium-ion batteries with high energy storage and a high-power rating, to enable applications such as electric vehicles, demands electrode materials with large charge storage capability and faster kinetics. We demonstrate the synthesis and utilization of the hierarchical porous carbon structures derived from bacterial cellulose–polyaniline nanocomposites as a promising anode material for high-rate lithium-ion batteries. Microstructural analysis of the derived carbon revealed the inheritance of fibrous backbone from bacterial cellulose along with the nanogranular structure of polyaniline. The structural characterization of as-derived porous carbon structures is performed by XRD, Raman spectroscopy, and XPS, and the electrochemical properties are analyzed by cyclic voltammetry, galvanostatic charge–discharge studies, and impedance spectroscopy. These nitrogen-doped carbon structures unveiled high reversible capacities of 432, 276, and 127 mAh/g at a 1C, 5C, and 10C rate, respectively, with an excellent capacity retention. Furthermore, first principle calculations are performed which indicate that the presence of oxidized, pyrrolic, and pyridinic nitrogen in carbon significantly enhances the lithium adsorption (nearly double than that of pristine carbon). Therefore, the enhanced electrochemical performance may be attributed to the combined effect of nitrogen doping and interconnected micromeso porous (hierarchical) network present in the hard carbon anode material.

Nitrogen and Oxygen Codoped Carbon Anode Fabricated Facilely from Polyaniline Coated Cellulose Nanocrystals for High-Performance Li-Ion Batteries

“…31,37−39 The O 1s spectrum (Figure 2d) was deconvoluted into four peaks located at 531.3, 532.3, 533.5, and 536.5 eV, corresponding to CO, C−OH, C−O−C, and C(O)OH, respectively. 22,23,30 The introduction of oxygen could improve the wettability of electrode materials and reduced their inert surface areas during the charge/ and (100) planes of graphitic carbon, 25,31,34,39 respectively, which demonstrated the successful transformation of the precursors into carbonaceous materials. The broad diffraction peaks revealed that the samples possessed typical amorphous carbon structures with a low degree of graphitization, which was consistent with the HRTEM.…”

“…The k 1 and k 2 could be obtained from the slope and y-axis intercept respectively by drawing a linear plot of i/ν 1/2 versus ν 1/2 . 23,31,32,47,48 Figure 5c displayed the contributions of two different charge storage mechanisms at different scan rates (the contribution ratios of capacitive and diffusion-controlled capacities for c-CNC and c-PANi electrodes are displayed in Figure S7b,d, respectively). It is obvious that the capacitive contribution enlarged with the scan rate increasing and dominated the total current at scan rates above 0.6 mV s −1 .…”

“…23,27,29,42 Moreover, the dominant capacitive controlled behavior could induce a faster kinetic performance and improve the rate capability and cyclic performance of electrode material. 31,47,48 4. CONCLUSIONS Nitrogen (N) and oxygen (O) codoped carbon was facilely fabricated by pyrolyzing cellulose nanocrystal/polyaniline (CNC/PANi) nanocomposite prepared through in situ polymerization of aniline onto CNC.…”

“…Due to the strong hydrogen bond interaction between N−H groups in PANi and O−H groups in CNC, it was facilitated to introduce a nitrogen source into the CNC derived carbon matrix. 6,27,31 The physicochemical properties of as-prepared N/O codoped carbon and its electrochemical performances were discussed in detail. As a result, the carbonized CNC/PANi nanobiocomposite deliv-ered a reversible specific capacity of 470 mAh g −1 at a current density of 200 mA g −1 after 100 cycles for Li-ion batteries.…”

Recent Progresses on Applications of Conducting Polymers for Modifying Electrode of Rechargeable Batteries

“…In addition, Illa et al prepared hierarchical N‐doped porous carbon nanofibers for lithium storage by the pyrolysis of bacterial cellulose/PANI composite. [ 199 ]…”