Nitrogen and Oxygen Codoped Carbon Anode Fabricated Facilely from Polyaniline Coated Cellulose Nanocrystals for High-Performance Li-Ion Batteries

A facile approach was developed to fabricate nitrogen/oxygen (N/O) codoped carbon anodes by direct carbonization of cellulose nanocrystal/polyaniline (CNC/PANi) nanocomposites which were prepared by in situ growth of PANi onto CNCs. The carbonized CNC/PANi (c-CNC/PANi) anode delivered a high reversible capacity of 470 mAh g–1 at 200 mA g–1 over 100 cycles, which was almost two times higher than those for c-CNC. Moreover, it presented a better rate performance and higher Li-ion diffusion coefficient than c-CNC and c-PANi anodes. The c-CNC/PANi anode also exhibited a distinguished cycling stability with high Coulombic efficiency around 100% at a high current density of 1000 mA g–1 even after 2000 cycles. The significant improvement in the electrochemical performance should be attributed to the larger specific area and uniform N/O dual heteroatoms codoping which can provide sufficient active sites for Li ions storage and induce superior diffusion kinetics of Li ions. This work provided a facile strategy to fabricate N/O codoping carbon derived from the renewable resource of CNC, and it is expected to be a promising candidate anode material for Li-ion batteries application.