Enabling improved cycling stability of hollow SnO2/C composite anode for lithium-ion battery by constructing a built-in porous carbon support

Owing to the cooperative effect of well-defined interior voids and conductive and flexible carbon coating, the hollow nanostructural SnO2/C composites exhibit significantly improved electrochemical performance over their pure nanostructured SnO2 counterparts, and hence attracts increasing research interests. However, the potential collapse of SnO2 inwards interior voids and subsequent agglomeration will diminish the cycling stability of hollow SnO2/C composites and hence needs to be further improved. Herein, to reduce the excess void space and block agglomeration of the SnO2 inwards interior voids, a cubic hollow SnO2/C composite with a built-in porous carbon support yolk has been designed and constructed successfully. As a result, thus as-constructed composite with a novel architecture displays significantly improved cycling stability as comparison to the similar hollow SnO2@C composite without a built-in porous carbon, delivering 788 and 588 mAh g−1 at 200 and 1000 mA g−1 after 550 and even 900 cycles, respectively. The results obtained here could pave the way for properly improving the cycling stability of other hollow metal oxides/carbon composites for advanced lithium-ion battery anodes.