Bio-inspired Architectures and Hetero-Atom Doping to Construct Metal Oxide based Anode for High Performance Lithium Ion Batteries

Pursuing the greater energy density and longer life span of lithium ion batteries (LIBs) are urgently needed to satisfy the dramatically increased demand in energy market, where the metal oxide-based anodes are being intensively studied due to the higher capacity over that of the traditional graphite anode. Herein, we introduce a new and sustainable strategy to construct the metal oxide-based anode with high capacity and extremely long cycle life, in which the features of bio-inspired architectures and hetero-atom doping can contribute a lot for great performances. In detail, one-dimensional tube-like metal oxide (e.g., MnO) coated on N-doped carbon framework (i.e., MnO/N-C) is designed using the natural abundant and renewable Metaplexis japonica fibers (MJFs) as the bio-template and hetero-atom sources. Benefiting from the uniqueness of structure and compositions, as-prepared MnO/N-C demonstrates extremely high rate capacities of 951, 777, 497, 435 mAh g-1 at the rates of 0.5, 2, 4 and 5 A g-1 respectively with a good stability more than 1000 cycles. We find that the electrochemical performances are superior to most previous MnO-based anode, in which the faster kinetics of conversion reactions on the merit of the ion/electron transportation and morphological evolution is verified. We hope that the concept of bio-inspired architectures with hetero-atom doping can be applied in the wider applications for greater capabilities.