Highly Graphitized Coal Tar Pitch-Derived Porous Carbon as High-Performance Lithium Storage Materials

Because of its high specific capacity and superior rate performance, porous carbon is regarded as a potential anode material for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). However, porous carbon materials with wide pore diameter distributions suffer from low structural stability and low electrical conductivity during the application process. During this study, the calcium carbonate nanoparticle template method is used to prepare coal tar pitch-derived porous carbon (CTP-X). The coal tar pitch-derived porous carbon has a well-developed macroporous-mesoporous-microporous hierarchical porous network structure, which provides abundant active sites for Li⁺ storage, significantly reduces polarization and charge transfer resistance, shortens the diffusion path and promotes the rapid transport of Li⁺. More specifically, the CTP-2 anode shows high charge capacity (496.9 mAh g^-1 at 50 mA g^-1), excellent rate performance (413.6 mAh g^-1 even at 500 mA g^-1), and high cycling stability (capacity retention rate of about 100 % after 1,000 cycles at 2 A g^-1). The clean and eco-friendly large-scale utilization of coal tar pitch will facilitate the development of high-performance anodes in the field of LIBs.