Recycling of Plastic Wastes for the Mass Production of Yolk–Shell-Nanostructured Co₃O₄@C for Lithium-Ion Batteries

Facing the ever-increasing production of municipal plastics, great efforts have been made to recycle plastic waste into high-value-added products. As the main components of plastic wastes, polypropylene (PP), polyethylene (PE), and polystyrene (PS) are uncharred polymers that are difficult to carbonize under normal conditions. To address this issue, transition-metal catalysts (Co 3 O 4 ) were introduced to carbonize plastic waste with high carbon yields. Herein, mixed-waste plastics (PP/PE/PS) were carbonized into yolk–shell-structured (YSS) Co 3 O 4 @C nanomaterials with a high yield of 49 wt %. A high capacity of 1066 mAh g –1 was achieved at 0.1 A g –1 after 100 cycles in lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). Moreover, galvanostatic intermittent titration technique results estimated that the YSS Co 3 O 4 @C possessed a higher Li + diffusion coefficient, ensuring improved cycling stability and rate performance. The present strategy not only provides a potential approach for recycling waste plastics into high-value carbon materials but also shows the possibility for the mass production of high-performance nanosized anode materials for LIBs in a commercial manner.