Bacterial cellulose-derived carbon as a self-supported and flexible anode for stable-performance lithium-ion batteries

Lithium -ion batteries (LIBs) have been a breakthrough in the arena of energy storage devices since their inception. Earlier the slurry -coated electrodes are used for the development of LIBs. However, the slurry -coated electrode includes electrochemically inactive species (such as current collector, binder, and carbon additive) which decreases the energy density of the device. Therefore, the research community extensively explores selfsupported and flexible electrodes for various electrochemical devices because of their lower electrochemical inactive species. This work reports the usage of sustainable bacterial cellulose as a precursor to derive a selfsupported anode for stable lithium -ion batteries. Detailed electrochemical and physicochemical properties were evaluated to understand the efficacy of the self -supported anode. Benefitting from the porous morphology, interconnected nanofibrous assembly, and efficient graphitic domain in carbonized bacterial cellulose the lithium -ion battery delivers an impressive electrochemical performance. Notably, lithium -ion cells with the anode delivered a capacity of 548 mAh/g at 0.05 A/g with shallow irreversible capacity loss (coulombic efficiency of the first cycle is 90%). The cell maintains a capacity of 198 mAh/g at an extremely high current of 2 A/ g and retains 82 % of capacity after 1000 cycles at 0.5 A/g. This work paves the way to create a self -supported and flexible electrode with a simple and scalable approach.