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Sulfur-doped 3D hierarchical porous carbon network toward excellent potassium-ion storage performance

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Abstract

Carbonaceous materials are promising anode candidates for potassium-ion batteries, but currently the unsatisfactory cycling and rate performances due to the sluggish diffusion kinetic and serious structure damage during K+ insertion/extraction limit their practical application. Herein, a series of sulfur-doped porous carbons (SPCs) were prepared via a template-assisted freeze-drying followed by the carbonization and sulfuration processes at different temperatures. Among the three as-synthesized samples, SPC-600 exhibits the highest specific capacity (407 mAh·g−1 at 0.10 A·g−1), the best rate (242 mAh·g−1 at 2.00 A·g−1) and cycling performance (286 mAh·g−1 after 800 cycles at 0.50 A·g−1). All the SPCs display higher capacities than the undoped carbon materials. The excellent electrochemical performance of SPC can be ascribed to the abundant three-dimensional porous structure together with S-doping in the disordered carbon, which is favor of providing adequate reaction active sites as well as fast ion/electron transport paths. The density functional theory (DFT) calculations further demonstrate that the sulfur-doping can promote K-ion adsorption and storage. Meanwhile, the kinetic analyses reveal that surface-induced capacitive mechanism dominates the K-ion storage process in SPCs, which contributes to ultrafast charge storage. This work provides an effective strategy for fabricating high-performance potassium-ion storage electrode materials.

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Acknowledgements

This study was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 51871046, 51902046, 52071073, 51874079, 51571054, 51771046 and 51674068), the Natural Science Foundation of Liaoning Province (No. 201602257), the Natural Science Foundation of Hebei Province (Nos. E2019501097, E2018501091 and E2020501004), the Science and Technology Project of Hebei Province (No. 15271302D), the Training Foundation for Scientific Research of Talents Project Hebei Province (No. A2016005004), the Young Talents Program in University of Hebei Province (No. BJ2018014), Hebei Province Higher Education Science and Technology Research Project (No. QN2017103) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Nos. N182304017, N182304015, N172302001 and N172304044).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Northeastern University, Shenyang, 110819, China

    Dan Wang, Kang-Hui Tian, Jie Wang, Zhi-Yuan Wang, Shao-Hua Luo, Yan-Guo Liu, Qing Wang, Ya-Hui Zhang, Ai-Min Hao & Ting-Feng Yi

  2. Key Laboratory of Dielectric, Electrolyte Functional Materia- Hebei Province, Qinhuangdao, 066004, China

    Zhi-Yuan Wang, Shao-Hua Luo, Yan-Guo Liu, Qing Wang, Ya-Hui Zhang, Ai-Min Hao & Ting-Feng Yi

  3. School of Resources and Materials, Northeastern University, Qinhuangdao, 066004, China

    Zhi-Yuan Wang, Shao-Hua Luo, Yan-Guo Liu, Qing Wang, Ya-Hui Zhang, Ai-Min Hao & Ting-Feng Yi

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  1. Dan Wang
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  2. Kang-Hui Tian
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  3. Jie Wang
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Correspondence to Zhi-Yuan Wang or Yan-Guo Liu.

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Wang, D., Tian, KH., Wang, J. et al. Sulfur-doped 3D hierarchical porous carbon network toward excellent potassium-ion storage performance. Rare Met. 40, 2464–2473 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12598-021-01715-2

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