Various NiO nanostructures have been attempted to be used as lithium ion batteries anode materials. However, the poor conductivity of NiO has the negative effect on conduction paths of electron and Li+ ion, and it also has the serious volume expansion during lithium insertion-extraction, which leads to not well cycle stability and poor rate capability for LIBs. In order to address the problem, Liu’s group try to synthesize the yolk-shell structured NiO. (Materials Chemistry Frontier).
Through the efforts of team members, we report the fabrication of yolk-shell structured NiO nanospheres by annealing of Ni coordination polymer spheres under air atmosphere. The synthesized NiO sample serving as anode materials show high discharge capacity, excellent cycle stability and rate capability. This work may shed a light for the design of other metal oxides with yolk-shell structure.
