Polydopamine-Derived Carbon: What a Critical Role for Lithium Storage?

Abstract

Polydopamine-derived carbon materials have attracted tremendous attention owing to nitrogen heteroatom doping. However, it is challenging to estimate the effect of the morphology and porosity of the polydopamine-derived carbon for lithium storage. Here, we designed three polydopamine-derived carbon materials with different morphologies and porosity: carbon nanospheres (CNs), mesoporous carbon nanospheres (MCNs), and bowl-like mesoporous carbon nanoparticles (BMCNs) to evaluate the electrochemical performance. Such a bowl-like mesoporous structure combines multiple advantageous features, including mesoporous channels and shorter transmission distance, thus delivering a high specific capacity. In addition, our work provides new insight into the electrochemical performance of polydopamine-derived carbon and a useful reference for its future application in high-performance lithium ion battery (LIB) electrode materials.

Polyaniline-Derived Nitrogen-Containing Carbon Nanostructures with Different Morphologies as Anode Modifier in Microbial Fuel Cells

“…To this extent, nitrogen-doped carbon nanostructures, such as nitrogen-doped ordered mesoporous carbon [ 20 ], N-doped carbon nanotube [ 21 ], nitrogen-doped graphene [ 22 ], self-nitrogen-doped carbon nanosheets [ 23 ], and nitrogen-doped carbon dots [ 24 ], were used for anode modification and show an improved MFC performance, which was attributed to the nitrogen functionality. Among various strategies that have been developed to introduce nitrogen functionality on the anode surface, direct annealing of N-containing precursors (i.e., polyaniline, polypyrrole, polydopamine) under an inert atmosphere [ 15 , 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 ] can simplify the preparation processes and reduce cost. Polyaniline (PANI), as a nitrogen-containing carbon precursor, has been widely investigated for electrochemical energy conversion and storage applications due to its easy synthesis, high environmental stability, low production cost, and high nitrogen content [ 19 , 27 , 28 ].…”