Pyrolytic synthesis of MoO3 nanoplates within foam-like carbon nanoflakes for enhanced lithium ion storage

Daxian Cao; Yanzhu Dai; Sanmu Xie; Hongkang Wang; Chunming Niu

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2017.12.077

Pyrolytic synthesis of MoO₃ nanoplates within foam-like carbon nanoflakes for enhanced lithium ion storage

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2018 Mar 15:514:686-693. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2017.12.077. Epub 2017 Dec 28.

Authors

Daxian Cao¹, Yanzhu Dai², Sanmu Xie¹, Hongkang Wang³, Chunming Niu¹

Affiliations

¹ (a) Center of Nanomaterials for Renewable Energy (CNRE), State Key Lab of Electrical Insulation and Power Equipment, School of Electrical Engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, China.
² (b) State Key Laboratory for Mechanical Behavior of Materials & School of Microelectronics, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, China.
³ (a) Center of Nanomaterials for Renewable Energy (CNRE), State Key Lab of Electrical Insulation and Power Equipment, School of Electrical Engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, China. Electronic address: hongkang.wang@mail.xjtu.edu.cn.

PMID: 29310098
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2017.12.077

Abstract

MoO₃ as electrode material for lithium ion batteries (LIBs) suffers from the poor ionic and electronic conductivity, while hybridizing nanostructured MoO₃ with carbon-based materials is regarded as an efficient strategy. Herein, we report the facile synthesis of MoO₃ nanoplates within foam-like carbon nanoflakes (CNFs) via the pyrolysis of molybdenum 2-ethtlhexanoate (C₄₈H₉₀MoO₁₂) at a low temperature of 300 °C under ambient atmosphere. Mixing C₄₈H₉₀MoO₁₂ with the highly porous foam-like CNFs allows the sufficient pyrolysis of Mo precursor, which can readily crystallize into MoO₃ with plate morphology. The loading amount of MoO₃ within CNFs can be easily and precisely controlled by adjusting the relative amount of C₄₈H₉₀MoO₁₂/CNFs, while the plate morphology of MoO₃ can be well preserved. The structural characteristics as well as the formation mechanism are investigated. When used as anode material for LIBs, optimized MoO₃/CNFs displays superior lithium storage performance, delivering a high discharge capacity of 791 mA h/g after 100 cycles at 500 mA/g and even ∼600 mA h/g at a high rate of 2000 mA/g. Moreover, the present pyrolysis synthetic strategy can be generally applied for low-cost and large-scale fabrication of various MoO₃/carbon nanocomposites, which demonstrates great potential in the development of high-performance electrodes for electrochemical energy-storage.

Keywords: Carbon nanoflakes; Lithium storage; MoO(3) nanoplates; Molybdenum 2-ethtlhexanoate; Pyrolysis synthesis.