Boron and nitrogen co-doped porous carbon nanotubes webs as a high-performance anode material for lithium ion batteries

Abstract

This paper reports the fabrication of porous carbon nanotubes webs with high level of boron (15.05 at.%) and nitrogen (6.71 at.%) co-doping (denote as BN-PCNTs) by using polypyrrole (PPy) nanotubes as the precursor. Instead of using virulent boron hydride, ammonia borane (NH3BH3, denote as AB), a versatile and non-toxic agent, was employed as an effective heteroatoms sources to induce B and N co-doping in mild conditions. Benefiting from the porous nanotube structure and high-level B, N co-doping, the BN-PCNTs exhibit high reversible capacity (∼900 mAh g−1 at a current density of 200 mA g−1) with good cycling and rate performances as anode materials in lithium ion batteries.