Lignin derived hierarchical porous carbon with extremely suppressed polyselenide shuttling for high-capacity and long-cycle-life lithium-selenium batteries

Lithium-selenium(Li-Se)batteries have attracted considerable attentions for next-generation energy storage systems owing to high volumetric capacity of 3265 m Ah cm^(-3) and excellent electronic conductivity(~10^(-5)S cm^(-1))of selenium.However,the shuttling effect and capacity fading prevent their wide applications.Herein we report a low-cost strategy for scalable fabrication of lignin derived hierarchical porous carbon(LHPC)as a new high-loading Se host for high-capacity and long-term cycling Li-Se batteries in carbonate electrolyte.The resulting LHPC exhibits three-dimensional(3D)hierarchically porous structure,high specific surface area of 1696 m^(2) g^(-1),and hetero-atom doping(O,S),which can effectively confine the Se particles into the micropores,and meanwhile,offer effective chemical binding sites for selenides from hetero-atoms(O,S).As a result,our Li-Se batteries based on Se@LHPC demonstrate high capacity of 450 m Ah g^(-1) at 0.5 C after 500 cycles,with a low capacity fading rate of only 0.027%.The theoretical simulation confirmed the strong affinity of selenides on the O and S sites of LHPC effectively mitigating the Se losing.Therefore,our strategy of using lignin as the low-cost precursor of hierarchically porous carbon for high-loading Se host offers new opportunities for high-capacity and long-life Li-Se batteries.