Sustainable Nitrogen Self-Doped Carbon Nanofibers from Biomass Chitin as Anodes for High-Performance Lithium-Ion Batteries

Herein, a cost-effective, green, and sustainable method was developed to fabricate N self-doped carbon nanofibers (CChCNs) as anodes for high-performance lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). After simple direct pyrolysis of biomass chitin nanocrystals (ChCNs), a novel precursor, the obtained CChCNs presented a cross-linked fibrous structure with large specific surface areas and hierarchical porous structures, which was instrumental in charge-storage capacity for LIBs. As expected, the as-prepared CChCNs exhibited distinguished lithium storage properties. It was found that the increase in conductivity could optimize charge and discharge under high current densities. CChCNs900 possessed a reversible specific capacity of 215 mA h g –1 at 1.5 A g –1 . In addition, all the samples presented excellent cycle stability, possessing capacity retention of 46.2, 67.4, 77.4, and 74.5% after a 500 cycle at a high current density of 1 A g –1 . This novel strategy provided a successful avenue to prepare high-performance LIB anodes from biomass nanomaterials.