Pineapple leaf fibers (PALF) as the sustainable carbon anode material for lithium-ion batteries

Abstract: Pineapple leaf fiber (PALF) is considered as a promising low cost carbon precursor to produce a high graphitic carbon material, regarding to its abundance and high containing crystalline cellulose up to 70 wt%. Accordingly, this work presents the production of high graphitic activated porous carbon material from the PALF as the anode material for lithium batteries by employing practical hydrothermal process, following by carbonization with KOH chemical activation. The impact of KOH concentration and the carbonization temperature on the material morphology, and eventually the electrochemical cell performance were analyzed. The optimized condition (i.e., KOH:biochar mass ratio as 2:1 under carbonization temperature of 750 °C) facilitated the formation of 3D interconnecting opened-channel porous carbon material with high BET specific surface area more than 2700 m² g⁻¹. The targeted activated porous carbon electrode could deliver a high initial charge–discharge capacity more than 3100 mAh g⁻¹ at the rate of 0.5 C. Nevertheless, it substantially dropped to about 991 mAh g⁻¹ for the second cycling test and continuously decreased to the average reversible capacity of about 693.2 mAh g⁻¹ after 100 cycles at 0.5 C. During 100 cycling tests, the conducted porous carbon electrode showed considerably high coulombic efficiency nearly 100%. Moreover, it also exhibited quite high reversible cycle stability averagely up to about 70% compared to the second cycling test.