Nitrogen‐Doped Hollow Porous Carbon Bowls Optimizing Maleic Acid Dissolution for Fast Kinetic and Long‐Life Lithium‐Organic Batteries

Abstract

AbstractOrganic conjugated carboxylic acids are promising anodes for lithium‐ion batteries (LIBs) owing to their high specific capacity, design flexibility, and environmental friendliness. Unfortunately, similar to polysulfides, organic conjugated carboxylic acid materials and their redox intermediates suffer from poor intrinsic electronic conductivity, severe dissolution issues, and the resulting shuttle effect, thereby giving rise to rapid capacity decay and poor cycling stability. Herein, a SiO2 template‐assisted pyrolysis strategy is developed to prepare nitrogen‐doped hollow porous carbon bowls (N‐HPCB) as highly efficient hosts for organic conjugated carboxylic acids (maleic acid, MA). Benefiting from the large specific surface area, rational pore structure, and numerous nitrogen defect sites, N‐HPCB can remarkably suppress the dissolution of MA and its redox intermediates (LixMA) through both physical confinement and chemical bonding and facilitate the LixMA conversion. With these merits, the MA@HPCB electrodes deliver a high reversible specific capacity of 1134.9 mAh g−1 at 0.1 A g−1, exceptional long‐term cyclability (retaining 328.8 mAh g−1 at 5 A g−1 after 985 cycles), and outstanding rate capability (189.1 mAh g−1 at 10 A g−1). Thus, the work provides a new approach to achieving a high‐rate and highly stable organic conjugated carboxylic acid materials.