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Aerosol-assisted preparation of N-doped hierarchical porous carbon spheres cathodes toward high-stable lithium-ion capacitors

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Abstract

Lithium-ion capacitors (LICs) are gradually emerging as one of the most indispensable hybrid energy storage devices. However, it is one main challenge to evade the mismatch of electrochemical kinetics and specific capacity between cathode and anode in LICs. Herein, we have proposed an efficient strategy to prepare the nitrogen-doped hierarchical porous carbon spheres (NHPCS) as cathode, which is synthesized by a simple aerosol-spraying pyrolysis using the low-cost phenolic resin as carbon source without any other catalyst or hard template. The NHPCS exhibits porous nanospheres structure with an appropriate nitrogen doping level (3.65 at.%). Benefitting from the two-pronged strategy of N-doped feature and nanostructure engineering, NHPCS achieves a high specific capacity of 74 mAh g−1 at a current density of 0.1 A g−1 and remains 86.5% of initial capacity even being subjected to a high rate of 50-fold. Furthermore, a high-performance LIC has been developed by coupling NHPCS cathode and hard carbon anode, which delivers a maximum energy density of 151 Wh kg−1 and excellent cycle stability (96.3% capacity retention after 3000 cycles). Significantly, such designed porous carbon could not only be convenient for scalable production, but also be served for many other energy storage devices.

Graphic abstract

We have presented a larger-scale spray pyrolysis strategy to prepare nitrogen-doped hierarchical porous carbon spheres (NHPCS). A high-stable lithium-ion capacitor has been constructed by coupling NHPCS cathode with hard carbon anode, which exhibits a maximum energy density of 151 Wh kg−1 and capacity retention of 96.3% over 3000 cycles, showing great potential for the next-generation energy storage application.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (U1802256, 51672128, 21773118, 21875107), the Key Research and Development Program in Jiangsu Province (BE2018122) and Project Funded by the Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions (PAPD). Mr. Ziqian Yang would like to acknowledge the financial support from the Undergraduate Innovation and Entrepreneurship Training Program in NUAA (2019CX00602).

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  1. Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Electrochemical Energy Storage Technologies, College of Material Science and Engineering, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing, 210016, People’s Republic of China

    Yinghong Xu, Jiangmin Jiang, Zhiwei Li, Ziqian Yang, Yadi Zhang, Yufeng An, Qi Zhu, Hui Dou & Xiaogang Zhang

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  1. Yinghong Xu
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  2. Jiangmin Jiang
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  3. Zhiwei Li
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Xu, Y., Jiang, J., Li, Z. et al. Aerosol-assisted preparation of N-doped hierarchical porous carbon spheres cathodes toward high-stable lithium-ion capacitors. J Mater Sci 55, 13127–13140 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-020-04955-2

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