Facile fabrication of MOF-derived octahedral CuO wrapped 3D graphene network as binder-free anode for high performance lithium-ion batteries

Abstract

In this work, an effective and facile strategy to fabricate binder-free electrodes composing 3D graphene network (3DGN) and octahedral CuO has been proposed. In this design, Cu-based MOF crystals were first uniformly grown on the surface of 3DGN substrate through a solution immersion method and then a subsequent thermal treatment isolated the formation of well-dispersed nanostructured CuO octahedras wrapped 3DGN. The obtained 3DGN/CuO composites were utilized as binder-free anodes of lithium-ion batteries for the first time, yielding a high reversible gravimetric capacity of 409mAhg−1 (a large areal capacity of 0.39mAhcm−2) at 100mAg−1, excellent cyclability with 99% capacity retention after 50 cycles and superior rate capability of 219mAhg−1 at 1600mAg−1. The remarkable performance of the composite electrode can be reasonably attributed to the synergistic interaction between octahedral CuO nanoparticles with high capacity and the conductive 3D graphene network with a large surface area and an interconnected porous structure.