Naturalized Bioreactor Assisted Fabrication of Ferrous(II) Phosphate NanoDots Decorated in Carbon for “Fast-Charging” Lithium-Ion Batteries

Biomanufacturing is an emerging technology that utilizes living organisms as production tools, with high specificity and selectivity, enabling customized production. Plant cell is a typical “factory” of biomanufacturing. Inspired by this, a novel bio-assisted strategy for preparing biomass-derived carbon@Fe 2 P composites has been proposed. For synthesis, Lemna minor L. is chosen as chassis plant to absorb Fe 3+ at first, then Fe 2 P can be generated in-situ in biomass during calcination. To reveal the transformation of Fe 2 P, the fate of Fe 3+ that absorbed by Lemna minor L. has been evolved. The carbon layers derived from the naturalized bioreactors (Lemna minor L. cells) can effectively constrain and disperse the synthesized Fe 2 P within nanoscale. The produced composite exhibits excellent charging-discharging capability that can achieve high specific capacity (≈340 mAh g −1 ) and long cycle life (2000 circles) at 1 A g −1 . These results demonstrate the green synthesis of Fe 2 P and the potential of the composite as a high-capacity and fast-charging anode. This strategy can also be used to prepare other transition metal phosphides (Co 2 P and Ni 12 P 5 ). In addition, this strategy combines the recovery and secondary utilization of metals in effluent, which is meaningful for phytoremediation.