Nano-sized Fe
3
O
4
/carbon as anode material for lithium ion battery
Jie Wang
a
, Hailei Zhao
a, b, *
, Zhipeng Zeng
a
, Pengpeng Lv
a
, Zhaolin Li
a
, Tianhou Zhang
a
,
Tianrang Yang
a
a
School of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, China
b
Beijing Key Lab of New Energy Materials and Technologies, Beijing 100083, China
highlights
Nano-sized Fe
3
O
4
/C was prepared by a simple citric-nitrate combustion process.
Fe
3
O
4
/C particles show coreeshell structure.
Fe
3
O
4
/C powder displays high specific capacity and good cycling stability.
Fe
3
O
4
/C composite exhibits a superior rate-capability.
article info
Article history:
Received 28 January 2014
Received in revised form
29 May 2014
Accepted 19 August 2014
Available online 4 September 2014
Keywords:
Composite materials
Chemical synthesis
Electron microscopy
Electrochemical properties
abstract
Nano-sized Fe
3
O
4
/carbon material is prepared via a simple citric-nitrate combustion method combining
with a hydrothermal carbon coating technique. The synthesized Fe
3
O
4
/carbon composite shows a high
reversible specific capacity (ca. 850 mAh g
1
at 100 mA g
1
; ca. 600 mAh g
1
at 500 mA g
1
), good rate-
capability as well as superior cycling stability as anode for lithium-ion batteries. The ameliorated elec-
trochemical performance of Fe
3
O
4
/carbon electrode is associated to the nano-sized particle feature and
the continuous carbon coating layer. The former provides short lithium-ion/electron diffusion distance,
while the latter enables the fast electron transport pathways. Besides, the carbon layer can act as a
protective component to prevent the active particle Fe
3
O
4
from aggregation and pulverization during the
charge/discharge processes.
© 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
In view of the ever-increasing environmental problems,
including global warming, ecological concerns and the gradual
depletion of oil resources, it is of significance to develop clean and
sustainable energy resources. The wind, solar and tidal energies are
the representatives of clean energy resources. Their variation in
time and dispersiveness in space necessitate the development of
high performance energy storage technologies. Lithium ion batte-
ries have been considered as the most attractive large scale storage
sources owing to the outstanding advantages of no memory effect,
longer lifespan, superior energy density, higher operating voltage,
low maintenance and the environmental benignity. Lithium ion
battery has been widely used in cellular phone, laptop computer,
digital camera, and other electronic devices, and is being consid-
ered for applications in electric and hybrid electric vehicles [1e6].
However, the graphite material using as the anode can not satisfy
the demands for high energy density batteries because of its limited
specific capacity (~372 mAh g
1
). Besides, its inherent character-
istics of the lower lithiation potential (below 0.2 V vs. Li
þ
/Li) and
the co-intercalation of solvated lithium ion readily cause safety and
capacity degradation problems [7e9]. Thereby, developing
advanced anode materials with higher specific capacity to replace
the current graphite-based anodes has become extremely urgent.
Currently, many types of materials have been considered as the
potential high capacity anode materials for lithium-ion batteries,
such as Sn-based [7,10e12] and Si-based [13e15] alloys, and tran-
sition metal oxides [16e25] (e.g. Fe
2
O
3
/Fe
3
O
4
, Co
3
O
4
, MoO
2
/MoO
3
,
MnO
2
, CuO, etc.). Among them, the transition metal oxides are of
the interest as the promising anode materials due to the superior
theoretical specific capacity (ca. 500e1000 mAh g
1
) [26] and the
high operating potential that can effectively avoid the lithium
dendrite formation and attendant safety problem. Different from
the classical lithium insertion/extraction or lithium alloying/de-
* Corresponding author. School of Materials Science and Engineering, University
of Science and Technology Beijing, 30 Xueyuan Road, Haidian District, Beijing
100083, China. Tel./fax: þ86 10 82376837.
E-mail addresses: hlzhao@ustb.edu.cn, hlzhao66@gmail.com (H. Zhao).
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Materials Chemistry and Physics
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/matchemphys
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.matchemphys.2014.08.037
0254-0584/© 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Materials Chemistry and Physics 148 (2014) 699e704