Expandable nitrogen-doped carbon-based anodes fabricated from self-sacrificial metal-organic frameworks for ultralong-life lithium storage

Abstract Eco-friendly carbon-based anodes are highly attractive for use as anode materials in lithium-ion batteries because of their accessibility, high conductivity, and satisfactory storage capacity. However, to date, the carbon anodes reported in literature exhibit low capacity, poor cycling stability, and cannot meet the current increasing demands for materials that possess high energy density. Herein, highly nitrogen-doped expandable carbon-based anodes are developed using the zeolitic imidazolate frameworks (ZIFs) ZIF-67 and ZIF-8 as self-sacrificial templates. Compared with pure carbon anodes, such as graphene oxide (GO) and carbon nanotubes (CNTs), the expandable N-doped with small size CNTs decorated GO (NC-GO) and CNTs (NCCNTs) anodes developed in this work exhibit gradually increasing reversible specific capacities, as well as high capacities of 790 and 800 mA h g−1, respectively, which can be sustained even after 500 cycles at 100 mA g−1. Moreover, the anodes show ultralong cycling lives with extremely low capacity loss rates in each cycle of 0.0042% for NC-GO over 7000 cycles and 0.0035% for NC-CNTs over 10,000 cycles, which are superior to those in the current literature. This work details a new vision and direction for the development of high-capacity ultralong cycling life carbon-based anodes for use in next generation rechargeable energy storage systems.