Self-sacrifice template formation of nitrogen-doped porous carbon microtubes towards high performance anode materials in lithium ion batteries

Abstract

The replacement of conventional graphite with high-performance turbostratic carbons has attracted tremendous interests for lithium ion batteries (LIBs). Herein, a facile and efficient self-sacrifice strategy is smartly developed to fabricate the nitrogen-doped porous carbon microtubes (NPCMs) by the carbonization of polypyrrole (PPY) functionalized electrospun polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) microfiber template. The key point of this strategy is the choice of self-sacrifice PMMA template, which can be evaporated at relatively low temperatures. After the calcination, the NPCMs with different nitrogen binding configurations, such as pyridinic-N, pyrrolic-N and graphitic-N, are derived from PPY accordingly. Benefiting from the appealing structural features, the NPCMs exhibit desirable electrochemical performance, including a high reversible capacity (877.3mAhg−1 at 0.05Ag−1), excellent rate capability (251.1mAhg−1 at 5Ag−1) and good cycling stability (655.1mAhg−1 with 83.7% retention after 400 cycles at 0.1Ag−1). This strategy might open new avenues for the design of a series of heteroatom-doped carbon materials in different application fields.