Fe₃O₄ nanoparticles encapsulated in graphitized and in-plane porous carbon nanocages derived from emulsified asphalt for a high-performance lithium-ion battery anode

Abstract

In this work, C@Fe₃O₄ composites were prepared through a typical template method with emulsified asphalt as carbon source, ammonium ferric citrate as transition metal oxide precursor, and NaCl as template. As an anode for lithium-ion batteries, the optimized C@Fe₃O₄-1:2 composite exhibits an excellent reversible capacity of 856.6 mA·h·g⁻¹ after 100 cycles at 0.1 A·g⁻¹ and a high capacity of 531.1 mA·h·g⁻¹ after 300 cycles at 1 A·g⁻¹, much better than those of bulk carbon/Fe₃O₄ prepared without NaCl. Such remarkable cycling performance mainly benefits from its well-designed structure: Fe₃O₄ nanoparticles generated from ammonium ferric citrate during pyrolysis are homogenously encapsulated in graphitized and in-plane porous carbon nanocages derived from petroleum asphalt. The carbon nanocages not only improve the conductivity of Fe₃O₄, but also suppress the volume expansion of Fe₃O₄ effectively during the charge‒discharge cycle, thus delivering a robust electrochemical stability. This work realizes the high value-added utilization of low-cost petroleum asphalt, and can be extended to application of other transition-metal oxides-based anodes.

Keywords

emulsified asphalt / Fe₃O₄ nanoparticle / in-plane pore / lithium-ion battery / anode

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Declaration of competing interests

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51402030), the Chongqing Special Key Project of Technological Innovation and Application Development (CSTB2022TIAD-KPX0031), the Team Building Project for Graduate Tutors in Chongqing (JDDSTD2022006), the Research and Innovation Program for Graduate Students in Chongqing (2023S0090), and the National Innovation and Entrepreneurship Projects for College Students (202310618015).

Online appendix

Electronic supplementary material (ESM) can be found in the online version at https://doi.org/10.1007/s11706-024-0687-7 and https://journal.hep.com.cn/foms/EN/10.1007/s11706-024-0687-7 that includes Figs. S1–S7.

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