Construction of yolk--shell Fe₃O₄@C nanocubes for highly stable and efficient lithium-ion storage

Abstract

The yolk–shell Fe₃O₄@C nanocubes were successfully synthesized through carbothermic reduction process from carbon-coated α-Fe₂O₃ precursor. The results show that the yolk–shell Fe₃O₄@C nanocubes are uniformly coated with a thin carbon layer, and a clear cavity about 150 nm in width between Fe₃O₄ core and carbon shell are formed due to the volume shrinkage during the reduction treatment. The obtained yolk–shell Fe₃O₄@C nanocubes exhibit excellent cycling stability (the discharge capacity is 709.7 mA·h/g after 100 cycles at the current density of 0.1C) and rate performance (1023.4 mA·h/g at 0.1C, 932.5 mA·h/g at 0.2C, 756.1 mA·h/g at 0.5C, 405.6 mA·h/g at 1C, and 332.3 mA·h/g at 2C, and more importantly, when the current density finally backs to 0.1C, a capacity of 776.8 mA·h/g can be restored). The outstanding lithium storage properties may be attributed to the unique yolk–shell structures.

Keywords

Fe₃O₄ / yolk--shell / nanocube / anode / lithium storage

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51202117), the Natural Science Foundation of Beijing (Grant No. 2162037), the Beijing Nova Program (Z171100001117077), the Beijing Outstanding Talent Program (No. 2015000020124G121), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. 2014QJ02), the State Key Laboratory of Coal Resources and Safe Mining (No. SKLCRSM16KFB04), the Key Laboratory of Advanced Materials of Ministry of Education (No. 2018AML03), and the Yue Qi Young Scholar Project of China University of Mining & Technology (Beijing) (No. 2017QN17).

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