Recyclable fabrication of hollow N-doped amorphous carbon nanospindles with abundant short-range curved carbon fragments as bifunctional anode for lithium/sodium ion storage

A recyclable hard-template method is proposed to exploit spindle-shaped hollow nitrogen-doped amorphous carbon (h-NAC) with a large number of short-range curved carbon fragments as anodes for lithium/sodium ion batteries (LIBs/SIBs). Besides providing adsorption sites due to the high existence of oxygen-containing functional groups (CO and COOH), the heavily exposed edge regions also provide a favorable storage environment with high adsorption energy for Li+/Na+ due to their short-range curved structure. Importantly, the etching solution of hard templates can be recycled to generate the FeOOH nanospindles as a precursor through a simple chemical titration, which supplies a new idea for the green preparation of hollow materials. The h-NAC electrode is proven to be bifunctional for storing lithium and sodium ions, displaying favorable rate capability (255 mAh g-1 and 106 mAh g-1 at 5 A g-1 for LIBs and SIBs, respectively). After 1000 cycles at 1 A g-1, the reproducible capacities of the LIBs and SIBs kept 496 mAh g-1 and 181 mAh g-1, respectively.