Rational design of Sn/SnO2/porous carbon nanocomposites as anode materials for sodium-ion batteries

摘要

Sodium-ion batteries (SIBs) have successfully attracted considerable attention for application in energy storage, and have been proposed as an alternative to lithium ion batteries (LIBs) due to the abundance of sodium resources and low price. Sn has been deemed as a promising anode material in SIBs which holds high theoretical specific capacity of 845 mAhg(-1). In this work we design nanocomposite materials consisting of porous carbon (PC) with SnO2 and Sn (Sn/SnO2/PC) via a facile reflux method. Served as an anode material for SIBs, the Sn/SnO2/PC nanocomposite delivers the primary discharge and charge capacities of 1148.1 and 303.0 mAhg(-1), respectively. Meanwhile, it can preserve the discharge capacity approximately of 265.4 mAh g(-1) after 50 cycles, which is much higher than those of SnO2/PC (138.5 mAh g(-1)) and PC (92.2 mAh g(-1)). Furthermore, the Sn/SnO2/PC nanocomposite possesses better cycling stability with 77.8% capacity retention compared to that of SnO2/PC (61.88%) over 50 cycles. Obviously, the Sn/SnO2/PC composite with excellent electrochemical performance shows the great possibility of application in SIBs. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.