Targeted regeneration and upcycling of spent graphite by defect‐driven tin nucleation

Abstract The recycling of spent batteries has become increasingly important owing to their wide applications, abundant raw material supply, and sustainable development. Compared with the degraded cathode, anode graphite often a relatively intact structure few defects after long cycling. Yet, most is simply burned or discarded due its limited value inferior performance on using conventional methods that are complex, have low efficiency, fail in restoration. Herein, we propose fast, efficient, “intelligent” strategy regenerate upcycle based defect‐driven targeted remediation. Using Sn as nanoscale healant, used rapid heating (~50 ms) enable dynamic droplets automatically nucleate around surface upon cooling strong binding (~5.84 eV/atom), thus simultaneously achieving dispersion As result, regenerated showed enhanced capacity cycle stability (458.9 mAh g −1 at 0.2 A 100 cycles), superior those commercial graphite. Benefiting from self‐adaption dispersion, different degrees can be similar structures performance. EverBatt analysis indicates regeneration upcycling significantly lower energy consumption (~99% reduction) near‐zero CO 2 emission, yield much higher profit than hydrometallurgy, which opens new avenue for direct spend an green, profitable manner battery manufacture.