Development of carbon materials from biomass by-products for high energy metal-sulfur battery applications

具有各种结构、织构和性能的碳材料已被广泛应用于工业领域。其中，自支撑碳膜具有许多独特的优点，包括：(I)易于与电极形状匹配的二维(2D)结构；(Ii)体积小、比表面积大，有效地提高了材料的利用率，促进了电荷传输；(Iii)易于转移和无粘结剂，有利于优化器件性能。近年来，杂原子掺杂的碳材料，特别是氮掺杂的碳材料，由于能够活化相邻的碳原子，从而获得更好的性能，受到了人们的特别关注。富含地球的可再生和可持续的生物质可以作为低成本的碳前驱体，用于合成具有高比表面积、有序的孔隙率和可调的孔径的活性多孔炭，特别是含氮的生物聚合物可以提供修饰的碳结构。在我们之前的工作中，我们已经从植物蛋白中制备了掺氮石墨炭纤维，并展示了它们作为超级电容器的潜力。然而，目前还缺乏对聚合物结构与石墨炭形成关系的基础性研究，生物质碳材料的应用还有待更好的探索。因此，本项目旨在以魁北克主要可获得的两种生物质副产品玉米蛋白和壳聚糖为原料，制备掺氮自立碳膜，并评价其在锂硫电池(Li-S)和钠硫电池(Na-S)中的潜在应用。拟议的研究项目将通过以下方式直接造福魁北克人和加拿大人：(I)有助于我们对将生物质转化为碳材料的基本理解；(Ii)产生具有理想性能和在电池和清洁能源研究中的附加值应用的高功能碳材料；以及(Iii)创建具有跨学科技能、专业知识和实践经验的HQP。我们将仔细考虑团队成员的多样性，我们都致力于在保持最高标准的同时，鼓励研究团队中的公平、多样性和包容性。

Carbon materials with a variety of structures, textures and properties have been widely used for industrial applications. Among them, self-standing carbon films possess many unique advantages, including: (i) two-dimensional (2D) structure easily matching with electrode shape, (ii) small volume and large surface area effectively improving utilization of material and facilitating charge transport and (iii) easy transfer and binder-free beneficial to optimize device performance. Recently, heteroatom-doped carbon materials, especially the nitrogen-doped ones, receive special attention due to the capacity of activating the adjacent carbon atoms and achieving improved performance. The earth-abundant renewable and sustainable biomass can be a low-cost carbon precursor for the synthesis of activated porous carbons with high surface area, ordered porosity and tunable pore sizes; especially the biopolymers containing nitrogen can provide the decorated carbon structure. In our previous works, nitrogen-doped graphitic carbon fibers have been fabricated from plant proteins and demonstrated their potential to be used as supercapacitors. However, there is a lack of fundamental investigation of relationship between polymer structures and graphitic carbon formation, and the applications of biomass-derived carbon materials remain to be better explored. Therefore, this project aims to develop nitrogen-doped self-standing carbon films from two biomass by-products largely available in Quebec, corn protein and chitosan, and evaluate their potential applications in lithium-sulfur (Li-S) and sodium-sulfur (Na-S) batteries. The proposed research project will have direct benefits to Quebecers and Canadians by way of: (i) contributing to our fundamental understanding of converting biomass into carbon materials; (ii) generating highly functional carbon materials with desirable properties and value-added applications in battery and clean energy research; and (iii) creating HQP with interdisciplinary skills, expertise, and hands-on experience. The diversity of the team members will be carefully considered, and we are all dedicated to encouraging equity, diversity, and inclusion within our research team while maintaining highest standards.