Naturally derived nanostructured materials from biomass for rechargeable lithium/sodium batteries

The ultimate goal of materials design and development is to come up with the best large-scale performance with proper structure and composition modification of individual building blocks. Bionics is gradually becoming the research focus as it signifies a promising strategy to make materials with generated structures having true three-dimensional order and multiple contributions to the bulk properties. In this article, we review advances in synthesis of nanostructured materials for developing high performance rechargeable batteries using biomass/bionic approaches. Understanding and mitigating some of the key factors that limit such rechargeable battery performance will also be briefly presented. We present a few examples to demonstrate how the biomass/bionics can be used to develop high-performance battery materials, and especially, highlight the underline rationale to use these approaches. Our hope is that the concepts and results presented in this article will prompt new researchers to join this field and help broaden the scope and impact of rechargeable batteries using the materials from biomass.