Industrial-Scale Produced Carbon Black as High-Performance Anode Materials for Sodium-Ion Batteries

In recent years, carbon black (CB) has been reported to possess sodium-storage capability beyond its conventional role as a conductive additive. Nevertheless, most studies merely focus on its auxiliary capacitive contribution, and systematic investigations on industrially mass-produced carbon black as standalone anode materials for sodium-ion batteries (SIBs) are still limited. Herein, nano-sized industrial carbon black was fabricated via a mature oil furnace method using low-cost coal tar by-products from coking industry. Its microstructure, surface functional groups, and sodium-storage performance can be effectively tuned by regulating industrial preparation parameters. Owing to the distinctive linear and dendritic three-dimensional network structure, as well as abundant surface active sites, the industrial carbon black achieves a high reversible capacity of 213.8 mAh g−1 at 0.1 A g−1 and retains 66.2% of the initial capacity at 10 A g−1. Moreover, the assembled NVP‖CB full cell delivers stable electrochemical performance with a capacity retention of 90.5% after 500 cycles. This work demonstrates that industrially produced carbon black is a low-cost and high-performance SIB anode material, offering a scalable route for the commercialization of sodium-ion batteries.