Chicken feathers as an intrinsic source to develop ZnS/carbon composite for Li-ion battery anode material

Nowadays, renewable biomass-wastes are considered as one of the green precursors for developing multifunctional nanomaterials. Herein, we successfully developed a zinc sulfide (ZnS) doped chicken feather carbon (ZnS-CFC) composite using bio-waste of chicken feathers (CFs) as the natural sulfur and carbon precursor via simple two-steps approach. Under a hydrothermal condition, Zn precursor in situ reacts with the CFs to form a ZnS doped hydrothermally treated feathers (ZnS-HTF) hybrid, and further pyrolysis yields a ZnS-CFC composite. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) revealed that ZnS nanoparticles are existing in a stable sub 10 nm size within the carbon matrix without any capping agents. As–prepared ZnS-CFC composite was utilized as an anode material for the Li-ion battery and achieved a reversible capacity of 788 mAh g⁻¹ after 150 cycles at 100 mA g⁻¹ with a good rate performance. Interestingly, the present work provides an eco-friendly way of developing metal sulfide-carbon composites that have the potential for various practical applications.