Inspired cheese-like biomass-derived carbon with plentiful heteroatoms for high performance energy storage

Directional construction of high performance carbon electrode from biomass plays a critical role in the development of energy storage devices. Herein, a straightforward and scalable route is reported to develop a cheese-like biomass-derived carbon electrode with plentiful heteroatoms for sodium-ion batteries and lithium-ion batteries by using egg white as a precursor. The resultant cheese-like structure provides more ion transport channels, shorter ion transport distance and increased charge transfer efficiency. At the same time, the self-doping by heteroatoms could offer high electronic conductivity and rich active sites. Benefited from the reasonable arrangement, the as-prepared electrode exhibits significantly enhanced sodium storage properties including highly reversible capacity (226.8 mA h g⁻¹ at 100 mA g⁻¹), superior rate capability and excellent capacity retention (92.8%). It also shows great lithium ion capacity (567.5 mA h g⁻¹ after 80 cycles at 100 mA g⁻¹), fine rate capability and outstanding capacity retention (104.8%). This work could shed light on the effective and scalable preparation of biomass-derived carbon for efficient energy storage applications.