The development of sodium-ion batteries (SIBs) is hindered by the rapid reduction in reversible capacity of carbon-based anode materials. Outside-in doping of carbon-based anodes has been extensively explored. Nickel and NiS2 particles embedded in nitrogen and sulfur codoped porous graphene can significantly improve the electrochemical performance. Herein a built-in heteroatom "self-doping" of albumen-derived graphene for sodium storage is reported. The built-in sulfur and nitrogen in albumen act as the doping source during the carbonization of proteins. The sulfur-rich proteins in albumen can also guide the doping and nucleation of nickel sulfide nanoparticles. Additionally, the porous architecture of the carbonized proteins is achieved through removable KCl/NaCl salts (medium) under high-temperature melting conditions. During the carbonization process, nitrogen can also reduce the carbonization temperature of thermally stable carbon materials. In this work, the NS-graphene delivered a specific capacity of 108.3 mAh g-1 after 800 cycles under a constant current density of 500 mA g-1 . In contrast, the Ni/NiS2 /NS-graphene maintained a specific capacity of 134.4 mAh g-1 ; thus the presence of Ni/NiS2 particles improved the electrochemical performance of the whole composite.
Keywords: doping; electrochemistry; graphene; proteins; sodium-ion batteries.
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