Ball Milling Modification of Carbon Nanomaterials for Supercapacitors and Rechargeable Alkali-ion Batteries

Abstract

Ball milling has emerged as a powerful, solvent-free mechanochemical strategy for modifying carbon nanomaterials, enabling precise control over their structure, porosity, and surface chemistry for advanced electrochemical energy storage. This technique uses mechanical energy to induce physical and chemical transformations, facilitating particle size reduction, defect engineering, heteroatom doping (e.g., N, O, S), and pore structure optimization. This review elaborates the mechanochemical modification principles for carbon materials. Subsequently, the research progress in the mechanochemical modification of carbon materials for the electrode materials of supercapacitors and rechargeable alkali-ion batteries are concluded. Furthermore, the significant challenges of the mechanochemical modification of carbon materials in energy storage applications are highlighted. In supercapacitors, ball milling produces biomass-and coal-derived porous carbons with high surface areas, hierarchical pores, and functional groups, significantly enhancing specific capacitance, rate capability, and cycling stability. For lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), it improves graphite anodes by introducing defects and heteroatoms, exceeding theoretical capacity limits, and enables the fabrication of silicon-carbon composites that mitigate volume expansion, delivering high capacities. In sodium-and potassium-ion batteries (SIBs and PIBs), ball milling can optimize hard carbon anodes by expanding interlayer spacing and creating defects, improving ion diffusion and storage for larger Na⁺ and K⁺ ions.Despite its scalability and cost-effectiveness, challenges remain in optimizing milling parameters, minimizing side reactions, and achieving industrial consistency. Future efforts should focus on advanced reactor designs, process automation, and integrating ball milling with other techniques to develop energy storage materials.