Due to the huge abundancy and low cost, natural polymers have been used as raw materials for energy storage materials and devices. The most common materials are pyrolyzed carbon materials which have been demonstrated for high capacity and long cycle life anode materials for Li, Na and K storage. Although a lot of progress have been made, huge potential of nature polymer based energy storage materials and devices remains to be discovered given better understanding of the structure and property relationship such as the effects of pore structures, doping and macro structure on electrochemical behaviors. Herein we examined the effects of pore structure (especially tortuosity) and doping choosing different nature polymers. Firstly, by pyrolyzing chitin or cellulose/PANI composite microspheres, we are able to prepare N, or N/S-codoped carbon anode materials with unique hierarchical microsphere structures respectively. These types of materials show high rate and long cycle life for Na and K storage. On the other hand, inspired by natural wood materials with aligned channels along the tree growth direction, we prepared a highly conductive, lightweight, and low-tortuosity carbon framework (CF) directly carbonized from natural wood. The uniqueness of the multichanneled CF enable the construction of ultrathick 3D electrodes in both a LiFePO4 battery and an all wood supercapacitor, which can load 60 mg cm-2 LiFePO4 in battery cathode and 75 mg cm-2 MnO2 in supercapacitor cathode respectively, and afford high areal capacity of 7.6 mAh cm-2 and 3600 mF cm-2 respectively. These work presents a new design concept for natural polymer based energy storage materials and devices.

Natural polymer based energy storage materials and devices

2019 Spring National Meeting

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.