Nanoscale 2006-06-01

A general strategy to construct uniform carbon-coated spinel LiMn2O4 nanowires for ultrafast rechargeable lithium-ion batteries with a long cycle life.

Retha R Newbold, Elizabeth Padilla-Banks, Wendy N Jefferson

Index: Nanoscale 7 , 13173-80, (2015)

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Abstract

Control over one-dimensional growth of spinel-type LiMn2O4 nanowires is challenging in the area of materials science due to their cubic crystal structure. The current strategy is to use a self-support template to fabricate LiMn2O4 nanowires, which is time-consuming and limits their large-scale commercial production. In this paper, we propose a general strategy to construct well-defined LiMn2O4 nanowires terminated with amorphous carbon at the edges by an ingenious method without using any template. Benefited from its unique carbon-coated nanowire structure, the electrode exhibits a capacitor-like rate performance and battery-like high capacity for long-time cycling. Even after 1500 cycles at an extremely high current density of 30 C, approximately 82% of its initial capacity can still be retained. Significantly, the strategy reported here will be beneficial and revelatory to manufacture other extensive one-dimensional robust carbon-decorated nanowires, paving new ways for future developments of ultrafast rechargeable lithium-ion batteries.