Crab Shells as Sustainable Templates from Nature for Nanostructured Battery Electrodes

• DOI: 10.1021/nl401729r
• Publication Date: 2013-06-11T19:48:36Z
• Authors: Hongbin Yao; Guangyuan Zheng; Weiyang Li; Matthew T. McDowell; Zhiwei Seh; Nian Liu; Zhenda Lu; Yi Cui
• Keywords: Carbon fibers

Rational nanostructure design has been a promising route to address critical materials issues for enabling next-generation high capacity lithium ion batteries portable electronics, vehicle electrification, and grid-scale storage. However, synthesis of functional nanostructures often involves expensive starting elaborate processing, both which present challenge successful implementation in low-cost applications. In seeking sustainable cost-effective prepare nanostructured battery electrode materials, we are inspired by the diversity natural materials. Here, show that crab shells with unique Bouligand structure consisting highly mineralized chitin-protein fibers can be used as biotemplates fabricate hollow carbon nanofibers; these then encapsulate sulfur silicon form cathodes anodes Li-ion batteries. The resulting electrodes specific capacities (1230 mAh/g 3060 silicon) excellent cycling performance (up 200 cycles 60% 95% retention, respectively). Since readily available due 0.5 million tons produced annually byproduct consumption, their use nanotemplate represents an exciting direction