Designing Hierarchical Porous ZnO/ZnFe 2 O 4 Hybrid Nanofibers with Robust Core/Shell Heterostructure as Competitive Anodes for Efficient Lithium Storage

Hierarchical hybrid heteroarchitectures possess attractive structural/compositional merits for lithium‐ion batteries (LIBs). Herein, a facile yet in situ growth strategy is proposed to scalably synthesize hierarchical porous ZnO/ZnFe 2 O 4 hybrid nanofibers (NFs) with robust core/shell heterostructure toward LIBs. In such hybrids, 2D ZnFe 2 O 4 nanosheets (NSs) are uniformly decorated on single‐crystalline ZnO core NFs, thereby affording more exposed active sites, a fast ion diffusion kinetic, and structural stability of electrodes during repeated cycling. As a result, benefiting from the unique hierarchical porous core/shell architecture and synergistic effects between the stable substrate of ZnO NFs and high‐capacity promoter of ZnFe 2 O 4 NSs, the optimized ZnO/ZnFe 2 O 4 hybrid as an anode for LIBs delivers a large reversible capacity of ≈688 mAh g −1 at 0.1 A g −1 , high rate capability (≈288 mAh g −1 at 2.0 A g −1 ), and remarkable cyclability (≈491 mAh g −1 even over 250 cycles at 0.5 A g −1 ) for efficient lithium storage. This work highlights the rational design of a hierarchical architecture with a stable substrate and high‐capacity phases for next‐generation energy storage applications.