writer：Guilin Feng, Xiaohong Liu, Xiaoming Tu, Wen Xi, Hanying Wang, Lei Zhou, Chen Wu, Panpan Dong, Chunliu Xu, Weiqing Yang
keywords：Hard carbons，Single-atom modification，Yeast-derived carbon，Cycling stability，Sodium-ion batteries
source：期刊
Issue time：2026年

Hard carbons (HCs) are the most promising anodes for sodium-ion batteries, but their kinetics and cycling sta bility remain unsatisfactory. Herein, we introduce a universal strategy for decorating HCs with transition metal single atoms (SAs) using yeast cells as a sustainable biosorbent and template. The yeast’s inherent negatively-charged functional groups and N/P-rich composition effectively coordinate and control the dispersion of metal ions, leading to the formation of stable SAs during pyrolysis. The optimized Cu-SA-modified HCs (YHCs-Cu SAs) achieves a high initial Coulombic efficiency of 86.7% and exceptional cycling stability, retaining 95% ca pacity after 2,500 cycles at 1C and demonstrating ultra-stable performance at 5C for 10,000 cycles (0.002% decay per cycle). Density functional theory calculations confirm that the Cu SAs reduce the Na+ diffusion barrier, and in-situ Raman spectroscopy verifies Na+ insertion into the graphitic domains during the low-voltage plateau. Notably, when extended to other transition metals (Fe, Ni, Co, Mn, and Zn), all YHCs-SA samples exhibit high-capacity retentions (>96% for around 120 cycles), significantly outperforming unmodified YHCs. This work establishes a novel biomass-based pathway for constructing single-atom-modified carbon materials, advancing the development of high-performance sodium-ion batteries