Nitrogen-Doped Carbon Aerogels Derived from Starch Biomass with Improved Electrochemical Properties for Li-Ion Batteries

Abstract

Among all advanced anode materials, graphite is regarded as leading and still-unrivaled. However, in the modern world, graphite-based anodes cannot fully satisfy the customers because of its insufficient value of specific capacity. Other limitations are being nonrenewable, restricted natural graphite resources, or harsh conditions required for artificial graphite production. All things considered, many efforts have been made in the investigation of novel carbonaceous materials with desired properties produced from natural, renewable resources via facile, low-cost, and environmentally friendly methods. In this work, we obtained N-doped, starch-based carbon aerogels using melamine and N2 pyrolysis as the source of nitrogen. The materials were characterized by X-ray powder diffraction, elemental analysis, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, galvanostatic charge–discharge tests, cyclic voltammetry, and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. Depending on the doping method and the nitrogen amount, synthesized samples achieved different electrochemical behavior. N-doped, bioderived carbons exhibit far better electrochemical properties in comparison with pristine ones. Materials with the optimal amount of nitrogen (such as MCAGPS-N8.0%—carbon aerogel made from potato starch modified with melamine and CAGPS-N1.2%—carbon aerogel made from potato starch modified by N2 pyrolysis) are also competitive to graphite, especially for high-performance battery applications. N-doping can enhance the efficiency of Li-ion cells mostly by inducing more defects in the carbon matrix, improving the binding ability of Li+ and charge-transfer process.

Constructing a Carbon-Encapsulated Carbon Composite Material with Hierarchically Porous Architectures for Efficient Capacitive Storage in Organic Supercapacitors

“…Therefore, the C-N bonding in the C 1s spectrum did not particularly point out for better reading. As revealed in Figure 5 a, the C 1s spectrum was deconvoluted into four peaks: (1) C=C bond at 284.8 eV, (2) C-O bond at 285.9 eV, (3) C=O bond at 287.8 eV, and (4) O=C-O bond at 290.2 eV [ 30 , 31 ]. It is known that the first peak was assigned to the sp 2 -type carbon, while the rest corresponded to the contribution of sp 3 -type carbon [ 27 ].…”

Hierarchical Porous and Sandwich-like Sulfur-Doped Carbon Nanosheets as High-Performance Anodes for Sodium-Ion Batteries

“…Herein, our team smoothly fabricated novel SCNs via an easy hydrothermal self-assembly approach with graphene oxide (GO) as the matrix, starch as the C source, and benzyl disulfide as the S source and realized the efficient doping of sulfur atoms in the carbon nanosheet materials. Here, starch as the C source has the advantages of green, harmless, widely available, renewable, and low cost . Benzyl disulfide as an organic S source can be split into S radicals to introduce S atoms into carbon-based materials, in which atomic doping is easy to realize .…”

Design of Economical and Achievable Aluminum Carbon Composite Aerogel for Efficient Thermal Protection of Aerospace

“…Subsequently, hydrogels can be converted from the colloidal solution by reforming the hydrogen bonds during the decrease in temperature [ 25 ]. Hence, the starch exhibits prominent advantages as the raw material to fabricate the carbon aerogels, since it does not require a complex pre-treatment or additional post-processing step [ 26 , 27 ]. Moreover, the introduction of aluminum ions in the process of the fabrication of carbon aerogel has been proposed as the way to promote the polymerization of organic precursors [ 28 ].…”