Casting amorphorized SnO2/MoO3 hybrid into foam-like carbon nanoflakes towards high-performance pseudocapacitive lithium storage

Hongkang Wang; Sanmu Xie; Tianhao Yao; Jinkai Wang; Yiyi She; Jian-Wen Shi; Guangcun Shan; Qiaobao Zhang; Xiaogang Han; Micheal Kh Leung

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2019.03.108

Casting amorphorized SnO₂/MoO₃ hybrid into foam-like carbon nanoflakes towards high-performance pseudocapacitive lithium storage

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2019 Jul 1:547:299-308. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2019.03.108. Epub 2019 Apr 2.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Center of Nanomaterials for Renewable Energy (CNRE), State Key Lab of Electrical Insulation and Power Equipment, School of Electrical Engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, People's Republic of China. Electronic address: hongkang.wang@mail.xjtu.edu.cn.
² Center of Nanomaterials for Renewable Energy (CNRE), State Key Lab of Electrical Insulation and Power Equipment, School of Electrical Engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, People's Republic of China.
³ Ability R&D Energy Research Centre (AERC), School of Energy and Environment, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
⁴ Institute of Precision Instrument and Quantum Sensing, School of Instrument Science and Opto-electronics Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing 100191, People's Republic of China.
⁵ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, College of Materials, Xiamen University, Xiamen, Fujian 361005, People's Republic of China. Electronic address: zhangqiaobao@xmu.edu.cn.
⁶ Ability R&D Energy Research Centre (AERC), School of Energy and Environment, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. Electronic address: mkh.leung@cityu.edu.hk.

PMID: 30965228
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2019.03.108

Abstract

We report an amorphorization-hybridization strategy to enhance lithium storage by casting atomically mixed amorphorized SnO₂/MoO₃ into porous foam-like carbon nanoflakes (denote as SnO₂/MoO₃@CNFs, or SMC in short), which are simply prepared by annealing tin(II)/molybdenum(IV) 2-ethylhexanoate within CNFs under ambient atmosphere at a low temperature (300 °C). The SnO₂/MoO₃ loading amount within CNFs can be easily adjusted by controlling the Sn/Mo/C precursors. When examined as lithium ion battery (LIB) anode materials, the amorphorized SnO₂/MoO₃@CNFs with carbon content of 32 wt% (also denote as SMC-32, in which the number represents the carbon content) deliver a high reversible capacity of 1120.5 mA h/g after 200 cycles at 200 mA/g and then 651.5 mA h/g after another 300 cycles at 2000 mA/g, which is much better than that of the crystalline SnO₂/CNFs (carbon content of 34 wt%), MoO₃/CNFs (carbon content of 22.7 wt%), or SnO₂/MoO₃@CNFs (with lower carbon contents of 11 and 25 wt%). The electrochemical measurements as well as the ex situ structure characterization clearly suggest that combination of amorphorization and hybridization of SnO₂/MoO₃ with CNFs synergistically contributes to the superior lithium storage performance with high pseudocapacitive contribution.

Keywords: Amorphorization-hybridization; Foam-like carbon nanoflakes; Lithium ion batteries; Pseudocapacitive contribution; SnO(2)/MoO(3) atomic scale mixture.