In-Situ Construction of Iron Sulfide Nanoparticle Loaded Graphitic Carbon Capsules from Waste Biomass for Sustainable Lithium-Ion Storage

Abstract

Iron sulfide (FeS) has gained reasonable attention as a potential electrode material for lithium-ion batteries owing to its high specific capacity. However, along with the intrinsically low conductivity of FeS, the generation of polysulfide intermediates and volume expansion encountered during the cycling process deteriorates its electrochemical performance. A viable solution would be to design conductive carbon nanoarchitectures capable of effectively accommodating electrochemically active FeS to provide an appropriate conductive pathway which can accelerate ion/electron transport. With this objective, we report a facile, green strategy that facilitates the in situ generation of FeS nanoparticles within graphitic carbon capsules (FeS@GCC) derived from waste biomass. Unlike the complex synthetic procedures reported before, the proposed ecofriendly strategy consists of simpler and fewer processing steps, thereby advocating the versatility of this method as a scalable and economic approach. The FeS@GCC composite is able to deliver superior discharge capacity of 505 mAh g(-1) at 1 C-rate, even after 100 cycles of lithiation and delithiation. At 5 C-rate, a discharge capacity of 370 mAh g(-1) is obtained for 500 cycles, substantiating the stable, high rate-cycling performance of this sustainable composite material.