Boosting K+ Capacitive Storage in Dual-Doped Carbon Crumples with B-N Moiety via a General Protic-Salt Synthetic Strategy

The heteroatom co-doped carbonaceous anodes have readily attracted great attention in potassium-ion batteries (PIBs), owing to their augmented carbon interlayer distances and increased K+ storage sites to induce enhanced capacity value. Nevertheless, the synergistic effect of dual-doped heteroatoms is still unclear and lacks systematic explorations. In addition, traditional synthetic routes are cumbersome with template removal step, which are normally deficient in product scalability. Herein, a generic protic-salt strategy is devised to realize sulfur-, phosphorus- or boron-nitrogen dual-doped carbon (SNC, PNC, or BNC) via varying the types of protic precursors (e.g., the acid). Throughout comprehensive instrumental probing and theoretical simulation, it is identified that the presence of B-N moiety can harvest high adsorption capability of K+ and hence exhibit more obvious pseudo-capacitance behavior than bare N-doped carbon counterpart. As a PIB anode, the BNC electrode displays an impressive reversible capacity (360.5 mAh g(-1) at 0.1 A g(-1)) and cycle stability (125.4 mAh g(-1) at 1 A g(-1) after 3000 cycles). In situ/ex situ characterizations further reveal the origin of the excellent electrochemical properties of the BNC electrode. Such a tailorable protic-salt derived anode material offers new possibilities to advance PIB devices.

Automated summary

The study shows that the presence of B-N moiety enhances the adsorption capability of K+, leading to high reversible capacity and cycle stability of the BNC electrode in PIBs. The use of a protic-salt derived BNC material brings new possibilities for improving the performance of PIB devices.