One-step reconstruction of acid treated spent graphite for high capacity and fast charging lithium-ion batteries

With the commercialization and popularization of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), the resulting massive spent LIBs cause severe concern about environmental pollution. Recently, recycling of metal elements from spent LIBs has been widely explored in industry, but the reuse of spent graphite (SG) anode materials still remains challenging. Herein, a novel regenerated graphite (N-RG) with nitrogen doping and enlarged interlayer spacing is prepared via simultaneous gas-phase exfoliation and element doping with acid treated SG as raw material. N-RG shows excellent rate performance, high capacity, and fast charging performance as LIB anode. Particularly, the capacity maintains 465.8 mAh g −1 at a current density of 0.1 A g −1 over 200 cycles. Even at a high current density of 4 A g −1 , N-RG still possesses a high capacity of 143.5 mA h g −1 , about twice as much as commercial graphite (CG). Moreover, the enlarged interlayer spacing induced by exfoliation endows N-RG anode with fast-charging ability in LIBs. This efficient regeneration strategy paves the way to reconstruct spent graphite as high-performance LIB anode material in industrial applications.