High Capacity and Fast Kinetics of Potassium-Ion Batteries Boosted by Nitrogen-Doped Mesoporous Carbon Spheres.

In view of rich potassium resources and their working potential, potassium-ion batteries (PIBs) are deemed as next generation rechargeable batteries. Owing to carbon materials with the preponderance of durability and economic price, they are widely employed in PIBs anode materials. Currently, porosity design and heteroatom doping as efficacious improvement strategies have been applied to the structural design of carbon materials to improve their electrochemical performances. Herein, nitrogen-doped mesoporous carbon spheres (MCS) are synthesized by a facile hard template method. The MCS demonstrate larger interlayer spacing in a short range, high specific surface area, abundant mesoporous structures and active sites, enhancing K-ion migration and diffusion. Furthermore, we screen out the pyrolysis temperature of 900 °C and the pore diameter of 7 nm as optimized conditions for MCS to improve performances. In detail, the optimized MCS-7-900 electrode achieves high rate capacity (107.9 mAh g−1 at 5000 mA g−1) and stably brings about 3600 cycles at 1000 mA g−1. According to electrochemical kinetic analysis, the capacitive-controlled effects play dominant roles in total storage mechanism. Additionally, the full-cell equipped MCS-7-900 as anode is successfully constructed to evaluate the practicality of MCS. Highlights: 1 Nitrogen-doped mesoporous carbon spheres (MCS) are prepared as anode materials of potassium-ion batteries by a facile method.2 The MCS have larger interlayer spacing, high specific surface area, abundant mesoporous structures and nitrogen-doped active sites, achieving high-rate and long-cycle performances as anodes.3 The capacitive-controlled effects play dominant role in total storage mechanism and the MCS anodes are successfully applied to K-ion full-cells achieving high rate capacities.