New paper on Fe-loaded carbon spherogels for high-performance lithium-ion batteries published in Chemistry of Materials (and featured on the cover)

New paper published in Chemistry of Materials. This constitutes collaborative work between the Universität Salzburg (Michael Elsaesser, Saeid Borhani, Gregor Zickler), the Leibniz Institute for Plasma Science and Technology (INP Greifswald) e.V. (Antje Quade), and us (Stefanie Arnold, Le Thao). Congratulations to Stefanie Arnold for her debut as last-and-corresponding author!

The work has now been featured on the cover of the journal. Our paper reports a scalable synthesis of iron-loaded carbon spherogels with tunable iron content, where uniformly distributed iron nanoparticles are embedded in a porous, conductive carbon framework to create lithium-ion battery electrodes with high capacity and strong cycling stability. It shows that these materials can reach capacities up to 1190 mAh/g with Coulombic efficiencies above 99% over 300 cycles, and that the best performance comes from balancing iron redox activity with the structural stability of the carbon host rather than simply maximizing iron loading. Our work matters because it positions iron-loaded carbon spherogels as a more sustainable, cobalt-free and nickel-free route to high-performance conversion-type battery electrodes, addressing a central materials challenge in next-generation energy storage.