The electrochemical performance enhancement of carbon anode by hybrid from battery and capacitor through nitrogen doping

Lithium-ion battery (LIB) is the dominant energy storage device for the application on electric vehicles and portable electronic devices. Up to now, the enhancement of LIBs’ energy density mainly depends on the improvement of anode’s capacity. Due to the obstacle of large volume effect and low rate performance, the use of intrinsic high-capacity anodes, such as silicon, is still in the laboratory stage. Combining battery and capacitor to improve the electrochemical performance of the commercial carbon anode is an alternative and effective strategy in practical application. In this paper, a high nitrogen (N) content (8.2%) carbon is obtained by pyrolyzing the melamine formaldehyde (MF) foam resin at low temperature (600 °C). It delivers a stable specific capacity of around 600 mAh g−1 at 0.1C. No significant capacity degradation appears after 200 cycles, and the coulombic efficiency maintained over 99.5%. Even at 1.2 C, a specific capacity of 350 mAh g−1 is delivered and so a Li-ions diffusion coefficient of 1.8×10–13 cm2s-1. The reason of the superior electrochemical performance of the high N-doped carbon anode is the synergistic effect of battery and capacitor. The calculated pseudocapacitance proportion is from 32 to 61% at scan rate from 0.1 to 1mV s−1.