Facile fabrication of MoS2 nanocrystals confined in waste leather derived N, P co-doped carbon fiber for long-lifespan of sodium/potassium ion batteries

Abstract

Due to its slow kinetics and complicated multiphase development during cycling, developing anode materials for sodium/potassium-ion batteries (SIBs/PIBs) with high-rate and long-cycle simultaneously is still crucial and challenging. Additionally, the application of abundantly available, waste biomass to energy storage device has become a research hotspot. Herein, using waste leather as the adsorbent and bioreactor, we facilely fabricating the leather derived N/P co-doped carbon fiber composite with MoS2 nanocrystals after sulfuration treatment. Due to the intrinsic advantage of texture and component of collagen fiber, the ultrasmall MoS2 nanocrystals are evenly embedded with N/P co-doped carbon fibers. As expected, the MoS2/NP-C anode shows enhanced sodium/potassium storage capacity. It exhibits a high specific capacity (368 mAh g−1 at 0.2 A g−1) for PIBs and amazing long-term cycling qualities (241 mAh g−1 at 1 A g−1 even after 2500 cycles) for SIBs. This work provides further insight into the application of waste biomass for fabricating nanocomposite in energy storage.