Electrochemical performance of expanded graphite prepared from anthracite via a microwave method

Expanded graphite has garnered considerable interest for potential applications in electrochemical energy storage due to its distinctive morphological and structural Li storage features. However, the present synthetic procedure of preparing expanded graphite is highly complex and yields low production. Herein, we demonstrate that an efficient microwave method can produce large-scale expanded graphite utilizing anthracite as a precursor. The designed expanded graphite exhibits a remarkably ordered graphitic structure and a unique morphology of porous layered gossamer nanosheets having a wider pore size distribution within the ranges of 3–70 nm and a practically huge specific surface area being 21.5 m2 g−1, which are beneficial for improving the conductivity of expanded graphite, inducing more active sites for electrochemical reactions and accelerating Li+ diffusion. Furthermore, the expanded graphite demonstrates a promising capacity utilization of 278.0 mAh g−1 and a stable Coulombic efficiency of 99.17% during 300 cycles at 0.2C when it is employed as lithium-ion batteries anode material. Hence, this study presents a promising method for the large-scale production of expanded graphite materials as anodes for lithium-ion battery by exploiting natural anthracite as the low-cost raw material.