CuO hollow nanoparticles/graphene composite used as anode materials for lithium-ion batteries

摘要

Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) have been widely used in portable electronic devices due to their high energy density, high voltage and eco-friendly property. They are regarded to have promising applications in electrical vehicles and hybrid electrical vehicles, which require the higher specific capacity. The metal oxide can be a potential alternative to graphite ascribed to the high capacity [1]. But they own several drawbacks, such as the volume expansion and aggregation during cycling process and low electric conductivity. ' Graphene, a novel two-dimensional carbon material, has been used to enhance the electrochemical properties of metal oxide anodes via the incorporation of graphene in metal oxide due to its outstanding electronic behavior [2'J. However, up to now, metal oxide nanoparticles used in previous reports are solid, so the phenomenon of the volume change still exists during the lithium-ion insertion/extraction process. Therefore, an ideal nanostructure to resolve the drawbacks of metal oxide for anode should be the hollow metal oxide structure/graphene composite, which has never been investigated to date. In this paper, the hollow CuO/graphene composite (CuO-GNSs) were prepared via a nanoscale Kirkendall-effect-based approach I .VI. The composite exhibits the excellent electrochemical performance, when used as the anode materials in LIBs, indicating their great potential for application in the anode.