Biogel‐Derived Polycrystalline MnO Spheres/S‐Doped Carbon Composites with Enhanced Performance as Anode Materials for Lithium‐Ion Batteries

To meet the practical requirement of advanced storage equipment, the electrode materials with low cost, high performance and readily large-scale production are of intensive concern nowadays. In this work, a natural marine biomass-gelidium amansii was used to fabricate novel polycrystalline MnO spheres/S-doped carbon composites (MnO/SC) with hierarchical porosity via a simple bio-sol-gel and pyrolysis process. By inducing bio-gels, the unique composites of polycrystalline MnO spheres encapsulated and interweaved by sulfur-doped carbon net were created, which leads to a higher loading of active materials in contrast to other reported bio-derived MnO/C materials. As anode materials for lithium ion batteries, the obtained MnO/SC composites delivered a high reversible capacity of 1100 mAh g-1 after 200 cycles at 0.2 A g-1 and a superior long-term cycling performance of over 500 mAh g-1 after 1000 cycles even at the high current density of 2 A g-1. Therefore, the present work represents a feasible large-scale fabricating approach toward the high performance electrode materials on base of rich natural biogels.