Three-dimensional porous graphene-like carbon cloth from cotton as a free-standing lithium-ion battery anode

Abstract

Most of the carbon-based anodes have been reported to exhibit relatively low capacity due to the lack of superior electrical conductivity, mechanical flexibility and high electrochemical stability. Here, we report a new and simple approach to fabricate N-doped porous graphene-like carbon cloth from cotton cloth by using chemical vapor deposition. The N-doped carbon cloth has a unique macroscopic hierarchical structure of few-layer graphene and a super-high specific surface area of 1890 m² g⁻¹, and exhibits outstanding mechanical and electrical characteristics. This free-standing carbon-based cloth is desirable to be an anode material in high power and energy density lithium ion batteries (LIBs). The N-doped carbon cloth shows a reversible capacity of 1485 mA h g⁻¹ at a current density of 50 mA g⁻¹ after 80 charge–discharge cycles, which is nearly four times the theoretical capacity of graphite. More importantly, a very high capacity of ∼500 mA h g⁻¹ is obtained at 1.0 A g⁻¹, and fades less than 5% after 200 cycles, exhibiting excellent high-rate performance and long-term cycling stability. The N-doped carbon cloth is a superior flexible LIB anode to other carbon-based materials due to the good combination of its hierarchical and porous structure, large surface area, high electrical conductivity and excellent mechanical stability.