Ultrafast laser carbonization endowing high defect density in porous carbon electrode for tunable nitrogen-doping towards high performance sodium storage
Huixia Chao, Hao Liang, Xiangsheng Luo, Zhongfeng Shi, Peijia Liu, Yingtang Zhou, Jinqiang Zhang
Abstract
• Porous carbon materials (LCs) are prepared by laser-assisted carbonation technology. • More lattice defects in the carbon matrix of LCs facilitates nitrogen doping in LCNs. • LCN-600 achieves a nitrogen content of 11.3 at% with an abundance of lone pair electrons. • LCN-600 showed superior activities in sodium storage and sodium-ion hybrid capacitors. Heteroatom-doped porous carbon materials hold significant potential for sodium-ion storage devices, yet challenges remain in scaling synthesis techniques with precise and efficient structure tailoring. In this study, we developed a porous carbon material (LCs) via laser-assisted carbonation, which introduced a higher density of lattice defects in the carbon matrix. These defects facilitated nitrogen doping, leading to the production of LCNs samples. Among them, LCN-600, with a nitrogen content of 11.3 at% and a significant number of lone pair electrons, exhibited outstanding sodium storage performance, delivering specific capacities of 302 and 210 mA h/g at current densities of 1.0 and 4.0 A/g, respectively, even after 7000 cycles. Kinetic analysis revealed that LCN-600 had a high capacitive contribution of 86.9 % for sodium uptake/release at a scan rate of 1.0 mV s −1 . Additionally, sodium-ion hybrid capacitors based on LCN-600 demonstrated excellent energy density and power capability. This study underscores the differences in microstructure and sodium storage performance of carbon materials prepared by different methods, offering an effective pathway for controllable synthesis of carbon electrodes for energy storage applications.