Porous Activity of Biomass-Activated Carbon Enhanced by Nitrogen-Dopant Towards High-Performance Lithium Ion Hybrid Battery-Supercapacitor

• Published in: Journal of the Electrochemical Society 2021-12, Vol.168 (12), p.120537
• Main Authors: Yu, Juan, Wang, Xuyang, Peng, Jiaxin, Jia, Xuefeng, Li, Linbo, Chuan, Xiuyun
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0013-4651; 1945-7111
• DOI: 10.1149/1945-7111/ac42a1

Biomass-activated carbon materials are promising electrode materials for lithium-ion hybrid capacitors (LiCs) because of their natural hierarchical pore structure. The efficient utilization of structural pores in activated carbon is very important for their electrochemical performance. Herein, porous biomass-activated carbon (PAC) with large specific surface area was prepared using a one-step activation method with biomass waste as the carbon source and ZnCl 2 as the activator. To further improve its pore structure utilization efficiency, the PAC was doped with nitrogen using urea as the nitrogen source. The experimental results confirmed that PAC-1 with a high nitrogen doping level of 4.66% exhibited the most efficient pore utilization among all the samples investigated in this study. PAC-1 exhibited 92% capacity retention after 8000 cycles, showing good cycling stability. Then, to maximize the utilization of high-efficiency energy storage devices, LiNi 0.8 Co 0.15 Al 0.05 O 2 (NCA), a promising cathode material for lithium-ion batteries with high specific capacity, was compounded with PAC-1 in different ratios to obtain NCA@PC composites. The NCA@PC-9 composite exhibited excellent capacitance in LiCs and an energy density of 105.45 Wh kg −1 at a high power density of 13.3 kW kg −1 . These results provide guidelines for the design of high-performance and low-cost energy storage devices.