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Carbon nanosheets derived from reconstructed lignin for potassium and sodium storage with low voltage hysteresis

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Abstract

Lignin is the second most abundant and the only nature polymer rich in aromatic units. Although aromatic-unit-rich precursors often yield soft carbon after carbonization, the side chains in lignin crosslink with the aromatic units and form a rigid three-dimensional (3D) structure which eventually leads to hard carbons. Through a graphene oxide-catalyzed decomposition and repolymerization process, we successfully reconstructed lignin by partially tailoring the side chains. Compared to directly carbonized lignin, the carbonized reconstructed lignin possesses significantly fewer defects, 86% fewer oxygen-functionalities, 82% fewer micropores, and narrower interlayer space. These parameters can be tuned by the amount of catalysts (graphene oxide). When tested as anode for K-ion and Na-ion batteries, the carbonized reconstructed lignin delivers notably higher capacity at low-potential range (especially for Na-storage), shows much-improved performance at high current density, and most importantly, reduces voltage hysteresis between discharge and charge process by more than 50%, which is critical to the energy efficiency of the energy storage system. Our study reveals that the voltage hysteresis in K-storage is much severer than that in Na-storage for all samples. For practical K-ion battery applications, the voltage hysteresis deserves more attention in future electrode materials design and the reconstruct ion strategy introduced in this work provides potential low-cost solution.

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Acknowledgements

This work is funded by Alberta Innovates through the Alberta Bio Future, Lignin Challenge 1.0 and Lignin Pursuit subprograms. The authors would like to thank West Fraser for providing the lignin sample and Dr. Eddie Peace from West Fraser for the discussion and suggestions regarding lignin processing and handling.

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  1. Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, T6G 1H9, Canada

    Keren Jiang, Xuehai Tan, Shengli Zhai, Ken Cadien & Zhi Li

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  1. Keren Jiang
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Correspondence to Zhi Li.

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Jiang, K., Tan, X., Zhai, S. et al. Carbon nanosheets derived from reconstructed lignin for potassium and sodium storage with low voltage hysteresis. Nano Res. 14, 4664–4673 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-021-3399-7

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