Design and Construction of Graphitic/Amorphous Heterophase Porous Carbon with a Lotus-Leaf-like Surface Microstructure for High-Performance Li-Ion and Na-Ion Batteries
Peng Chen, Fan Ye, Yanting Gao, Qing Liu, Yunhua Sun, Tong Guo, Binglong Huang, Xin Wang, Yongsheng Fu
Abstract
In this work, we design and construct a graphitic/amorphous heterophase porous carbon with a lotus-leaf-like surface microstructure via using cellulose paper as a single carbon source. The results of morphological observations show that there are abundant graphitic granular bulges with an average size of 40 nm and large numbers of micropores on the surface of amorphous carbon, which are similar to the surface microstructure of a lotus leaf. This unique surface microstructure endows the graphitic/amorphous carbon with a large surface area of 372 m2/g and a remarkable electrical conductivity of 14.3 S/cm. The graphitic/amorphous carbon is directly used as a freestanding and binder-free anode with a high surface mass of 2.6 mg/cm2, which delivers high specific capacities of 335.9 mA h/g and 193 mA h/g at 100 mA/g for Li-ion batteries and Na-ion batteries, respectively. Moreover, the graphitic/amorphous carbon freestanding anode exhibits superior long-term cycling stability (1000 cycles) and excellent rate performance for both Li-ion and Na-ion batteries.