Facile fabrication of double-shelled hollow SnO2@C nanoparticles with improved lithium storage via a novel heterogeneous template strategy

摘要

Tin dioxide (SnO2) has been considered as one of the most promising candidates to surpass the capacity limitation of conventional graphite anode of lithium-ion batteries. However, the tremendous volume change of SnO(2 )generated during cycling process gives rise to poor cycling performance and thus seriously impedes the practical use of SnO2 anode in lithium-ion batteries. It is suggested that fabrication of double-shelled hollow nanostructured SnO2/C composites is expected to be able to solve above problem effectively, but is difficult to be achieved because of the increased complexity of the structures. Herein, we for the first time demonstrate a novel heterogeneous template strategy to facilely fabricate double-shelled hollow SnO2@C nanoparticles (DSH SnO2@C). It is worthy of noting that the double-shelled hollow structure is formed in one-step hydrothermal process, due to the rational adoption of a heterogeneous template and therefore shows facile characteristic. The shells of DSH SnO2@C consist of ultra-fine SnO2 nanocrystals as well as the outer ultra-fine SnO2 nanocrystals are further coated by a thin layer of amorphous carbon, hence have many structural characteristics such as large specific surface area, rich pores, adequate free space, and carbon coating. As expected, the as-prepared DSH SnO2@C presents improved lithium storage performance as an anode for lithium-ion batteries, exhibiting a high capacity of 769 mAh g(-1) at 200 mA g(-1) after even 350 cycles, which is around 98.6% retention of the second cycle. Moreover, thus concept of heterogeneous template strategy may be extended to design and fabrication of other metal oxides-based nanocomposites with double-shelled hollow structures for application in other various fields such as catalysis, drug delivery and sensor. (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.