Surfactant-Assisted Growth of a Conversion-Type Binary Metal Oxide-Based Composite Electrode for Boosting the Reversible Lithium Storage.

High-performance anode materials play a crucial role in paving the development of next-generation lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). NiCoO, as a typical binary metal oxide, has been extensively demonstrated to possess higher capacity and electrochemical activity compared with a monometal oxide such as NiO or CoO. However, the advances in the application of LIBs are usually limited by the relatively low electrical conductivity and large volume change during repeated charging/discharging processes. Herein, a NiCoO@carbon nanotube (CNT) composite electrode with advanced architecture is developed through a facile surfactant-assisted synthetic strategy. The introduced polyvinyl pyrrolidone can greatly facilitate the heterogeneous nucleation and growth of the NiCo precursor on CNTs and thus benefit the uniform transformation to a well-confined NiCoO@CNT composite. The CNTs combined with NiCoO tightly act as both a conductive network for enhancing the ion/electron transfer and a support for mitigating the volume expansion of NiCoO. As a result, the NiCoO@CNT electrode exhibits a high initial capacity of 830.3 mA h g and a good cycling stability of 608.1 mA h g after 300 cycles at 2000 mA g.