The rational design and fabrication of electrode materials with desirable architectures and optimized properties has been demonstrated to be an effective approach towards high-performance lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). Although nanostructured metal oxide electrodes with high specific capacity have been regarded as the most promising alternatives for replacing commercial electrodes in LIBs, their further developments are still faced with several challenges such as poor cycling stability and unsatisfying rate performance. As a new class of binder-free electrodes for LIBs, self-supported metal oxide nanoarray electrodes have many advantageous features in terms of high specific surface area, fast electron transport, improved charge transfer efficiency, and free space for alleviating volume expansion and preventing severe aggregation, holding great potential to solve the mentioned problems. This review highlights the recent progress in the utilization of self-supported metal oxide nanoarrays grown on 2D planar and 3D porous substrates, such as 1D and 2D nanostructure arrays, hierarchical nanostructure arrays, and heterostructured nanoarrays, as anodes and cathodes for advanced LIBs. Furthermore, the potential applications of these binder-free nanoarray electrodes for practical LIBs in full-cell configuration are outlined. Finally, the future prospects of these self-supported nanoarray electrodes are discussed.
Keywords: 3D porous substrates; hierarchical structures; lithium‐ion batteries; metal oxides; nanostructure arrays.