Surfactant-Assisted Growth of a Conversion-Type Binary Metal Oxide-Based Composite Electrode for Boosting the Reversible Lithium Storage

High-performance anode materials play a crucial role in paving the development of next-generation lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). NiCo 2 O 4 , as a typical binary metal oxide, has been extensively demonstrated to possess higher capacity and electrochemical activity compared with a monometal oxide such as NiO or Co 3 O 4 . However, the advances in the application of LIBs are usually limited by the relatively low electrical conductivity and large volume change during repeated charging/discharging processes. Herein, a NiCo 2 O 4 @carbon nanotube (CNT) composite electrode with advanced architecture is developed through a facile surfactant-assisted synthetic strategy. The introduced polyvinyl pyrrolidone can greatly facilitate the heterogeneous nucleation and growth of the NiCo precursor on CNTs and thus benefit the uniform transformation to a well-confined NiCo 2 O 4 @CNT composite. The CNTs combined with NiCo 2 O 4 tightly act as both a conductive network for enhancing the ion/electron transfer and a support for mitigating the volume expansion of NiCo 2 O 4 . As a result, the NiCo 2 O 4 @CNT electrode exhibits a high initial capacity of 830.3 mA h g -1 and a good cycling stability of 608.1 mA h g -1 after 300 cycles at 2000 mA g -1 .