Abstract
Limited by the size of microelectronics, as well as the space of electrical vehicles, there are tremendous demands for lithium-ion batteries with high volumetric energy densities. Current lithium-ion batteries, however, adopt graphite-based anodes with low tap density and gravimetric capacity, resulting in poor volumetric performance metric. Here, by encapsulating nanoparticles of metallic tin in mechanically robust graphene tubes, we show tin anodes with high volumetric and gravimetric capacities, high rate performance, and long cycling life. Pairing with a commercial cathode material LiNi0.6Mn0.2Co0.2O2, full cells exhibit a gravimetric and volumetric energy density of 590 W h Kg−1 and 1,252 W h L−1, respectively, the latter of which doubles that of the cell based on graphite anodes. This work provides an effective route towards lithium-ion batteries with high energy density for a broad range of applications.
Highlights
Limited by the size of microelectronics, as well as the space of electrical vehicles, there are tremendous demands for lithium-ion batteries with high volumetric energy densities
There are increasing demands for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) with high gravimetric energy; due to the limited space that are available to accommodate the batteries in microelectronics and electric vehicles, developing LIBs with high volumetric energy density is emerging as a important theme[1,2,3,4,5]
Among the vast library of anode materials, metals and metal oxides generally exhibit significantly higher volumetric capacities than the carbonaceous materials owning to their high gravimetric capacity and tap density[12,13,14,15]
Summary
Limited by the size of microelectronics, as well as the space of electrical vehicles, there are tremendous demands for lithium-ion batteries with high volumetric energy densities. Sn exhibits large-volume change during the lithiation and delithiation, which disrupts the electrode structure and electronic conductive networks and results in poor cycling life[19,20] To address these issues, various Sn, Sn alloys[21,22,23,24,25], and Snbased composites[26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35] with designed structures (e.g., nanowires, nanosheets, and porous structures)[36,37,38,39,40] and compositions have been explored, whereas making Sn anodes with high energy density and long cycling life remains challenging. Reducing the SnO2 nanoparticles leads to the formation of Sn nanoparticles encapsulated within the double-graphene-tubes, denoted as Sn/DGT
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