N-doped porous carbon as a high-performance anode for potassium ion batteries

Heteroatom doping has been proven to be an effective strategy to improve capacity and cycling stability of host materials by providing abundant defects and active sites for gust ions storage. Therefore, we synthesize N-doped porous carbon materials (NPC) and employ it as an anode for PIBs . The optimized NPC delivers a high capacity (284.9 mAh g −1 ), good rate capability, and long cycle lifespan (213.6 mAh g −1  at 2000 mA g −1 after 400 cycles). Through theoretical calculations, we further reveal that the improvement of electrochemical performance can be considerably ascribed to improved conductivity and adsorption energy induced by N doping .