Construction of conductive Ni‐Co‐molybdate solid‐solution nanoparticles encapsulated in carbon nanofibers towards Li‐ion batteries as high‐rate anodes

Transition metal oxides as promising electrode materials have been widely explored for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). Nonetheless, their practical applications are still hindered by their modest electronic conductivities, poor rate properties, and huge volume changes/rapid capacity degradation over the ceaseless delithiation/lithiation processes. To address the issues, we firstly encapsulate nano-dimensional Ni0.5Co0.5MoO4 with a solid solution structure in the carbon nanofibers (denoted as [email protected]) via a simple electrospinning technique. The uniform distribution of self-confined conductive NCMO-SS nanoparticles (NPs) with a high loading of ∼54.5 wt.% in the elastic CNFs framework effectively buffers the mechanical stress/volume change, reinforces the structural integrity, and brings abundant active phase boundaries, favoring their enhanced lithium-storage properties. It is the synergistic component/composition and structure merits that make the as-obtained mesoporous [email protected] exhibit larger reversible capacities and better electrochemical stability for efficient lithium storage particularly at high rates, compared to the simple Ni/Co-molybdates and even their physical mixture. Moreover, the [email protected] full LIBs provide an energy density of ∼225.4 Wh kg‒1 and good cyclic stability. The contribution here promises a huge potential of our constructed carbon-matrix-confined NCMO-SS NPs for advanced LIBs and beyond.