Synthesis of nitrogen-doped amorphous carbon nanotubes from novel cobalt-based MOF precursors for improving potassium-ion storage capability

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Amorphous carbon materials with sophisticated morphologies, variable carbon layer structures, abundant defects, and tunable porosities are favorable as anodes for potassium-ion batteries (PIBs). Synthesizing amorphous carbon materials typically involves the pyrolysis of carbonaceous precursors. Nonetheless, there is still a lack of studies focused on achieving multifaceted structural optimizations of amorphous carbon through precursor formulation. Herein, nitrogen-doped amorphous carbon nanotubes (NACNTs) are derived from a novel composite precursor of cobalt-based metal-organic framework (CMOF) and graphitic carbon nitride (g-CN). The addition of g-CN in the precursor optimizes the structure of amorphous carbon such as morphology, interlayer spacing, nitrogen doping, and porosity. As a result, NACNTs demonstrate significantly improved electrochemical performance. The specific capacities of NACNTs after cycling at current densities of 100 mA/g and 1000 mA/g increased by 194 % and 230 %, reaching 346.6 mAh/g and 211.8 mAh/g, respectively. Furthermore, the NACNTs anode is matched with an organic cathode for full-cell evaluation. The full-cell attains a high specific capacity of 106 mAh/g