Simple One-Pot Synthesis of Hexagonal ZnO Nanoplates as Anode Material for Lithium-Ion Batteries

Haipeng Li,Yan Zhao,Fuxing Yin,Chengwei Zhang,Yongguang Zhang,Zhumabay Bakenov,Yaqiong Wei

doi:10.1155/2016/4675960

Abstract

Hexagonal ZnO nanoplates were synthesizedviasimple one-pot hydrothermal reaction of Zn(CH3COO)2and CO(NH2)2. XRD, SEM, and HRTEM were used to investigate the composition and microstructure of the material. Together with the facile strain relaxation during structure and volume change upon cycling, this plate-like structure of ZnO is favorable for physical and chemical interactions with lithium ions because of its large contact area with the electrolyte, providing more active sites and short diffusion distances. The resulting hexagonal ZnO nanoplates electrode exhibited good cyclability and delivered a reversible discharge capacity of 368 mAh g−1after 100 cycles at 0.1 C.

Highlights

Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), the most widely used rechargeable battery for mobile electronic devices, are rapidly expanding their range of applications into fields such as hybrid electrical vehicles (HEV) and electrical vehicles (EV) [1, 2]
ZnO was developed with regular nanoplate shapes with an average diameter of around 800 nm and a thickness of around 85 nm; it can be seen that the nanoplates are interconnected, and this may lead to a better electric contact among the active particles [10]
This suggestion is in a good agreement with the XRD results showing that the as-prepared ZnO sample is highly crystalline exhibiting strong and sharp reflection peaks, which is further confirmed by HRTEM equipped with the selected area electronic diffraction (SAED)

Summary

Introduction

Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), the most widely used rechargeable battery for mobile electronic devices, are rapidly expanding their range of applications into fields such as hybrid electrical vehicles (HEV) and electrical vehicles (EV) [1, 2]. Graphite, owning a low theoretical capacity of 372 mAh g−1, represents the state-of-the-art anode material, which greatly limits the further application of the LIBs [3,4,5] This is why, among other promising alternatives, ZnO has been proposed as a more suitable candidate anode for generation systems based on its much higher theoretical capacity of 978 mAh g−1; in addition, ZnO has several other advantages, such as low cost, facile preparation, and a high chemical stability [6,7,8]. Physical and electrochemical properties of the resultant ZnO as an anode material for LIBs are reported

Experimental

Results and Discussion

Conclusions