Rational Design of Bimetallic Zeolitic Imidazolate Framework-Derived C, N Dual-Doped ZnO/Co for Boosting Lithium Storage (vol 6, 2100463, 2022)

Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) are the preeminent technology for energy storage, having the highest energy density for large-scale commercial applications. Owing to oast assiduous studies, a good number of reported advanced anode materials possess excellent electrochemical properties. In this work, a porous C, N dual-doped ZnO/Co composite is successfully prepared by metal-organic frameworks (MOF)-template mediated synthesis method utilizing a self-sacrificing template of bimetallic zeolitic imidazolate framework (denoted as ZnCo-ZIF) and is tested as a lithium-ion battery anode material. Due to the advantageous structural and morphological features, such as well-defined open framework clusters with polyhedron crystal structure, conductive porous carbon network and synergistic effects, the as-prepared C, N dual-doped ZnO/Co electrode delivers a specific capacity of 800 mAh g(-1) at 0.2 A g(-1) for 500 cycles together with unprecedented cycling ability of 590 mAh g(-1) at 1 A g(-1) over 1000 cycles. Moreover, density functional theory (DFT) calculations demonstrate the relationship between the electronic structure and electrochemical activity of ZnO/Co anode material. These results show that the synthesized C, N dual-doped ZnO/Co is a promising high-performance anode material for LIBs.