Porous Carbon with Alumina Coating Nanolayer Derived from Biomass and the Enhanced Electrochemical Performance as Stable Anode Materials

Abstract

With the ever-increasing world population, the energy produced from green, environmentally friendly approaches is in high demand. In this work, we proposed a green and cost-effective strategy for synthesizing a porous carbon electrode decorated with alumina oxide (Al2O3) from cherry blossom leaves using the pyrolysis method followed by a sol-gel method. An Al2O3-coating nano-layer (4–6 nm) is formed on the porous carbon during the composition fabrication, which further adversely affects battery performance. The development of a simple rich-shell-structured C@Al2O3 nanocomposite anode is expected to achieve stable electrochemical performances as lithium storage. A significant contributing factor to enhanced performance is the structure of the rich-shell material, which greatly enhances conductivity and stabilizes the solid–electrolyte interface (SEI) film. In the battery test assembled with composite C@Al2O3 electrode, the specific capacity is 516.1 mAh g−1 at a current density of 0.1 A g−1 after 200 cycles. The average discharge capacity of carbon is 290 mAh g−1 at a current density of 1.0 A g−1. The present study proposes bioinspired porous carbon electrode materials for improving the performance of next-generation lithium-ion batteries.