Bacterial cellulose-derived carbon as a self-supported and flexible anode for stable-performance lithium-ion batteries

Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) have been a breakthrough in the arena of energy storage devices since their inception. Earlier the slurry-coated electrodes are used for the development of LIBs. However, the slurry-coated electrode includes electrochemically inactive species (such as current collector, binder, and carbon additive) which decreases the energy density of the device. Therefore, the research community extensively explores self-supported and flexible electrodes for various electrochemical devices because of their lower electrochemical inactive species. This work reports the usage of sustainable bacterial cellulose as a precursor to derive a self-supported anode for stable lithium-ion batteries. Detailed electrochemical and physicochemical properties were evaluated to understand the efficacy of the self-supported anode. Benefitting from the porous morphology, interconnected nanofibrous assembly, and efficient graphitic domain in carbonized bacterial cellulose the lithium-ion battery delivers an impressive electrochemical performance. Notably, lithium-ion cells with the anode delivered a capacity of 548 mAh/g at 0.05 A/g with shallow irreversible capacity loss (coulombic efficiency of the first cycle is 90%). The cell maintains a capacity of 198 mAh/g at an extremely high current of 2 A/g and retains 82 % of capacity after 1000 cycles at 0.5 A/g. This work paves the way to create a self-supported and flexible electrode with a simple and scalable approach.