Sustainable application of biomass by-products: Corn straw-derived porous carbon nanospheres using as anode materials for lithium ion batteries

Abstract

We propose a green and sustainable development method to convert corn straw into porous carbon nanospheres for lithium ion battery electrode materials. Biomass porous carbon nanospheres were synthesized by high-temperature carbonization and activation using corn straw. Through the comparison of different activator, it is found that the carbon nanospheres activated by CaCl2 can not only retain the spherical structure, but also obtain rich porous, thereby enabling excellent electrochemical performance (546 mA h g−1 at the end of 100 cycles at 0.2C). The porous carbon nanospheres from low-cost and non-pollution corn straw cellulose are ideal candidate for the negative electrode material of lithium ion batteries.