High-rate lithium/sodium storage capacities of nitrogen-enriched porous antimony composite prepared from organic-inorganic ligands

Abstract While Sb-based materials are attracting much attention as promising lithium/sodium ion batteries anodes because of excellent theoretical specific capacity (660 mAh g−1), it is still challenging to achieve long cycling stability and excellent rate capability due to sluggish reaction kinetics and serious volume expansion during electrochemical process. Herein, to alleviate this issue, we design a novel nitrogen-enriched Sb@NCs composite through a facile and simple organic-inorganic coordination reaction, which could ensure metal ions and nitrogen element distributed on the carbon framework uniformly. In the lithium/sodium ion batteries matched with Sb@NCs composites with high nitrogen content (9.81 at.%) exhibit outstanding performances that a high-rate performance of 263.9 mAh g−1 at 25 A g−1 for lithium ion storage and a discharge capacity of 359.8 mAh g−1 at 0.1 A g−1 after 250 cycles for sodium ion storage. This facile and novel method may pave a way to prepare nitrogen-enriched materials to improve the ion storage and rate performances.