Abstract
Highly porous carbon with large surface areas is prepared using cotton as carbon sources which derived from discard cotton balls. Subsequently, the sulfur-nitrogen co-doped carbon was obtained by heat treatment the carbon in presence of thiourea and evaluated as Lithium-ion batteries anode. Benefiting from the S, N co-doping, the obtained S, N co-doped carbon exhibits excellent electrochemical performance. As a result, the as-prepared S, N co-doped carbon can deliver a high reversible capacity of 1,101.1 mA h g(-1) after 150 cycles at 0.2 A g(-1), and a high capacity of 531.2 mA h g(-1) can be observed even after 5,000 cycles at 10.0 A g(-1). Moreover, excellently rate capability also can be observed, a high capacity of 689 mA h g(-1) can be obtained at 5.0 A g(-1). This superior lithium storage performance of S, N co-doped carbon make it as a promising low-cost and sustainable anode for high performance lithium ion batteries.