A review on the N-doped carbon materials: Preparation, property and an application exemplification for sodium storage

As a powerful technology, defect engineering by heteroatom doping endows carbon materials with some new functions such as unique electronic structure and high electrochemical activity, showing a great significance for their structure modulation towards high-performance application. N-doping has been widely investigated due to the similar atom radius with carbon, high electronegativity as well as multiplex configuration. In this review, we mainly summarized the preparation methods and properties of N-doped carbon materials and also discussed their application potential with an exemplification for sodium-ion storage. The in-situ and post-treatment preparation strategies were detailly discussed. The relationship between N content/configuration and crystallinity, electronic conductivity, wettability, chemical reactivity as well as sodium-ion storage performance was discussed. Meanwhile some related researches of our group were also introduced. This review is expected to provide a powerful guidance for the controlled preparation and structure design of N-doped carbon materials.