Abstract
? 2022 Elsevier B.V.Volume expansion and structural instability of electrode materials are the major challenges to limit the ion battery development, especially for electrochemical conversion reactions-based materials. Herein, we developed hollow cuprous oxide nanocubes (HCON) as anode materials for lithium ion battery using a surfactant free, low-cost and large-scale synthesis approach based on self-assembly principle in NaCl solution. HCON delivered significantly high capacity of 202 mAh/g at current density of 1000 mA/g after 200 cycles for Li ion storage and 261 mA h/g at current density of 500 mA/g after 50 cycles for Na ion storage. Furthermore, catalytic chemical vapor deposition (CCVD) technique is employed to address partially crystalline carbon coating on HCON surface for stabilizing structure during Li+ insertion and extraction processes. Partially crystalline carbon decorates including nanodots and nanolayers are produced on HCON surface in relatively lower temperature range of 110–140 °C in CCVD process resulting in the formation of Cu2O/Cu@C hybrid. And Cu2O/Cu@C anode kept discharge retention of 84% for 200 cycles with reversible capacity of 265.3 mA h/g even at high rate of 2000 mA/g, significantly better than pure HCON anode and delivered discharge capacity of 11.3 times of pure HCON electrode (23.4 mAh/g). The reasonable combination of self-assembly approach and CCVD technique offers an effective way to introducing carbon nanomaterials in atomic level for designing high-performance electrode materials in ion battery.
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