A Comprehensive Review on Metal-Oxide Nanocomposites for High-Performance Lithium-Ion Battery Anodes

In recent years, lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) have been widely used in the fields of small electronic devices, wearable electronic devices, and electric vehicles, because of their high energy density and good rate performance. Commercial LIBs generally use carbonaceous materials as anodes. Although carbonaceous materials have the advantages of low price and simple manufacture, carbonaceous anodes such as graphite have a fatal flaw, that is, their theoretical capacity is only 372 mA h g–1, which will greatly limit the development of large-capacity LIBs. The development of high-performance anode materials is essential for the further application of LIBs. Many works show that by further adopting reasonable structural design to manufacture nanocomposites, better performance can be obtained. In this review, we introduce and discuss the development of metal oxide (MO) and MO nanocomposites for LIB anodes. Some advanced nanostructures of MO nanocomposites, such as core–shell structure, low-dimensional structure, and porous structure, are summarized. This review comprehensively analyzes the application of MO nanocomposites for LIB anodes in recent years.