Stress-relieved hollow porous carbon nanoring structures anchored with ZnCo2O4 nanoparticles towards super stable lithium storage

Abstract

Stress-induced structural mechanical instability is a common occurrence in the electrode material during electrochemical cycling, especially for composite material systems. The structural mechanics engineering of nanocomposites comprising electrochemical active materials and carbon with novel structures holds great promise in addressing this issue. However, conventional carbonaceous materials often encounter challenges in long-term durability and high specific capacity stemming from their intrinsic uneven stress distribution and few active sites. Herein, finite element analysis reveals that the ring-like structure effectively mitigates stress concentration from expansion and possesses high packing density, outperforming traditional nanosphere and nanocube architectures. Accordingly, nanocomposites consisting of hollow porous nanostructured N-doped carbon nanorings (N-CNRs) anchored with bimetallic ZnCo2O4 nanoparticles are designed, which exhibit an extraordinary cycling performance for lithium storage with 96.4 % capacity retention following 1000 cycles and an impressively low storage degradation rate of 0.00357 % per cycle, as well as displaying an excellent specific capacity (1218 mA h/g at 0.1 A g−1) and outstanding rate performance (565 mA h/g at 5.0 A g−1). The well-engineered design nanocomposite features the synergistic effect of electrochemically active ZnCo2O4 nanoparticles integrated with structurally stable carbon nanorings for enhanced electrochemical performance.