Template-Free Synthesis Of Hollow Fe3O4 Nanoparticles And Their Applications In Lithium-Ion Batteries

摘要

The increase in the demand for power applications creates tremendous need to improve upon current lithium-ion battery technologies. The current work is concerned about the search for anode materials which are less prone to the pulverization problem and fast capacity fading. It has been proposed that hollow nanostructures are able to mitigate this problem and Fe3O4 is chosen as the subject of this study. Hollow Fe3O4 nanoparticles are synthesized via a template-free solvothermal method using FeCl3 and urea as starting materials. Temporal XRD and TEM studies indicate that the growth follows an inside-out Ostwald ripening mechanism. Higher concentrations of urea in the starting material result in lower percentages of hollow particles and this observation is consistent with the proposed growth mechanism. The performance of the hollow particles as anode materials in lithium-ion batteries is tested and shown to be superior to their solid counterparts, with higher percentages of hollow particles giving better performance, which provides evidence for the hypothesis that hollow structures are able to alleviate the pulverization problem. Future work would mainly focus on the explicit substantiation of the hypothesis via post-mortem morphology and XRD studies and mechanical studies and other approaches to further improve the performance.