Hard carbons issued from date palm as efficient anode materials for sodium-ion batteries

Sodium-ion batteries (SIBs) are among the most promising candidates for large-scale electrical energy storage devices owing to the low cost, abundance, and widespread of sodium resources. However, finding a suitable anode material is a critical necessity to uphold the commercialisation of SIBs. Herein, we report a facile synthesis process to prepare hard carbons derived from date palm biomass consisting of direct pyrolysis of seeds or pulp at different heat treatment temperatures in the range between 800 and 1400 °C. The electrochemical performances of the prepared hard carbons were investigated in SIBs and exhibited high reversible capacity of 300 mAh g−1 and promising initial coulombic efficiency (ICE) of 88.4%, which is the highest ICE reported for hard carbon materials to date. This work is the first to report a successful implementation of date palm as precursor to prepare low cost and high performance hard carbon anode materials for SIBs.