Pyrolytic synthesis of MoO nanoplates within foam-like carbon nanoflakes for enhanced lithium ion storage.

MoO as electrode material for lithium ion batteries (LIBs) suffers from the poor ionic and electronic conductivity, while hybridizing nanostructured MoO with carbon-based materials is regarded as an efficient strategy. Herein, we report the facile synthesis of MoO nanoplates within foam-like carbon nanoflakes (CNFs) via the pyrolysis of molybdenum 2-ethtlhexanoate (CHMoO) at a low temperature of 300 °C under ambient atmosphere. Mixing CHMoO with the highly porous foam-like CNFs allows the sufficient pyrolysis of Mo precursor, which can readily crystallize into MoO with plate morphology. The loading amount of MoO within CNFs can be easily and precisely controlled by adjusting the relative amount of CHMoO/CNFs, while the plate morphology of MoO can be well preserved. The structural characteristics as well as the formation mechanism are investigated. When used as anode material for LIBs, optimized MoO/CNFs displays superior lithium storage performance, delivering a high discharge capacity of 791 mA h/g after 100 cycles at 500 mA/g and even ∼600 mA h/g at a high rate of 2000 mA/g. Moreover, the present pyrolysis synthetic strategy can be generally applied for low-cost and large-scale fabrication of various MoO/carbon nanocomposites, which demonstrates great potential in the development of high-performance electrodes for electrochemical energy-storage.