Carbon coating on metal oxide materials for electrochemical energy storage

During the past decades, nano-structured metal oxide electrode materials have received growing attention due to their low development cost and high theoretical specific capacity, accordingly, quite a lot of metal oxide electrode materials are being used in electrochemical energy storage devices. However, the further development was limited by the relatively low electrical conductivity and the volume expansion during electrochemical reactions. Thus, many approaches have been proposed to obtain high-efficiency metal oxide electrode materials, such as designing nanomaterials with ideal morphology and high specific surface area, optimizing with carbon-based materials (such as graphene and glucose) to prepare nanocomposites, combining with conductive substrates to enhance the conductivity of electrodes, etc. Owning to the advantages of low cost and high chemical stability of carbon materials, core–shell structure formed by carbon-coated metal oxides is considered to be a promising solution to solve these problems. Therefore, this review mainly focuses on recent research advances in the field of carbon-coated metal oxides for energy storage, summarizing the advantages and disadvantages of common metal oxides and different types of carbon sources, and proposing methods to optimize the material properties in terms of structure and morphology, carbon layer thickness, coating method, specific surface area and pore size distribution, as well as improving electrical conductivity. In addition, the double or multi-layer coating strategy is also a reflection of the continuous development of carbon coating method. Hopefully, this rereview may provide a new direction for the renewal and development of future energy storage electrode materials.