Amorphous FePO4/reduced graphene oxide composite prepared from jarosite residue and its application as a novel anode material for lithium-ion batteries

Rational utilization of jarosite residue is significantly important from the view of environmental protection and resource recycling. Herein, we report a facile preparation of porous amorphous FePO4/reduced graphene oxide (rGO) composite by utilizing the iron resource in jarosite residue with a selective chemical precipitation method, and demonstrate its great potential as a high-performance anode material of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). The FePO4/rGO composite exhibits superior cyclic performance (812.7 mA h g-1 over 300 cycles at 500 mA g-1) and high-rate capability (335.2 mA h g-1 even at a high current density of 10 A g-1) in a half cell. More importantly, the full LIB assembled with FePO4/rGO anode and commercial Li(Ni0.5Co0.2Mn0.3)O2 (NCM523) cathode still delivers a high and stable capacity of 674.9/528.7 mA h g-1 upon 100/300 cycles at 200/500 mA g-1, indicating the great potential of this FePO4/rGO composite as a new anode material with high lithium storage performance. This work proposes a simple, feasible, and cost-effective strategy for the high-valued utilization of jarosite residue and provides a reference for the design and development of FePO4-based anode materials for LIBs.