N, O co-doped urchin-like carbon microspheres as high-performance anode materials for lithium ion batteries

Abstract We report a unique N/O co-doped urchin-like carbon microspheres (UCMSs) via facile pyrolysis process based on urchin-like polyaniline microspheres (UPMSs) as precursor. UPMSs are obtained through simple self-assembled method without any aided reagent, so the total preparation process of UCMSs is very easy and repeatable. Among three samples, UCMSs-600 shows high lithium storage capacity at 50 mA g−1 (952 mAh g−1) and UCMSs-700 possesses relatively good rate and cycling performance (only 0.026% of attenuation in every cycle at 0.5 A g−1). The correlation between structural parameters (carbon interlayer distance, ordered degree, pore structure and heteroatom doping) and lithium storage features (reversible capacity, rate and cycling performance) of UCMSs with different carbonization temperatures are discussed in detail. And we can obtain the conclusion that designing carbon materials with unique spherical structure and heteroatom-doped feature is a very efficient approach to obtain advanced lithium ion batteries.