A reign of bio-mass derived carbon with the synergy of energy storage and biomedical applications

Abstract

The high specific surface area and suitable pore size distribution of carbon based electrodes significantly improves the energy and power density of energy storage devices. The present study details the development of eco-friendly and low-cost carbon material containing fluorine (F) atoms prepared from biomass Ipomoea carnea flower (IC). The favourably developed carbon material is used as electrode for lithium‑sulfur batteries (LSBs), supercapacitors and biomedical application of the same is explored. Owing to its high theoretical specific capacity, high energy density and low production cost, LSBs are recognised as propitious class of energy storage devices. The detriments like fast capacity fading arising due to insulating nature, shuttle effect and volume expansion of sulfur electrode is surmount by employing ternary composite of sulfur/silicon dioxide/IC (SSIC) as cathode for LSBs. The outcome of this work reveals that polysulfides are confined both physically and chemically by highly electronegative F atoms present in IC along with SiO2, thereby alleviating shuttle effect and demonstrates better electrochemical performance. SIC electrode exhibited a coulombic efficiency of 95%, whereas SSIC electrode delivered efficiency of 99.5% after entire cycling life. Here, IC carbon matrix is also employed as electrode material for supercapacitor device which delivered specific capacitance up to 382 F g−1 which is outstanding when compared to capacitances from other reported carbon supercapacitors. The cytotoxicity of IC carbon is analysed by co-culturing IC carbon with human breast cancer cells (MCF-7 cell line). The cell death is observed in the IC50 concentration of 56.23 μg/ mL.