Hollow Bio-derived Polymer Nanospheres with Ordered Mesopores for Sodium-Ion Battery

Abstract

A novel coordination polymerization-driven hierarchical assembly approach for spatially controlled fabrication of phytic acid-based bio-derivatives was developed. The resultant ferric phytate bio-derived polymer featured hollow nanosphere architecture, ordered meso-channels, high surface area, and large pore volume, as anode material, delivering a remarkable electrochemical performance. Bio-inspired hierarchical self-assembly provides elegant and powerful bottom-up strategies for the creation of complex materials. However, the current self-assembly approaches for natural bio-compounds often result in materials with limited diversity and complexity in architecture as well as microstructure. Here, we develop a novel coordination polymerization-driven hierarchical assembly of micelle strategy, using phytic acid-based natural compounds as an example, for the spatially controlled fabrication of metal coordination bio-derived polymers. The resultant ferric phytate polymer nanospheres feature hollow architecture, ordered meso-channels of ~ 12 nm, high surface area of 401 m 2 g −1 , and large pore volume of 0.53 cm 3 g −1 . As an advanced anode material, this bio-derivative polymer delivers a remarkable reversible capacity of 540 mAh g −1 at 50 mA g −1 , good rate capability, and cycling stability for sodium-ion batteries. This study holds great potential of the design of new complex bio-materials with supramolecular chemistry.

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Identifiers

DOI

10.1007/s40820-020-0370-1

Journal

Nano-Micro Letters

Year

2020