Sub-100 nm hollow carbon nanospheres with thin shells are highly desirable anode materials for energy storage applications. However, their synthesis remains a great challenge with conventional strategies. In this work...Sub-100 nm hollow carbon nanospheres with thin shells are highly desirable anode materials for energy storage applications. However, their synthesis remains a great challenge with conventional strategies. In this work, we demonstrate that hollow carbon nanospheres of unprecedentedly small sizes （down to - 32.5 nm and with thickness of - 3.9 nm） can be produced on a large scale by a templating process in a unique reverse micelle system. Reverse micelles enable a spatially confined Stober process that produces uniform silica nanospheres with significantly reduced sizes compared with those from a conventional Stober process, and a subsequent well-controlled sol-gel coating process with a resorcinol-formaldehyde resin on these silica nanospheres as a precursor of the hollow carbon nanospheres. Owing to the short diffusion length resulting from their hollow structure, as well as their small size and microporosity, these hollow carbon nanospheres show excellent capacity and cycling stability when used as anode materials for lithium/sodium-ion batteries.展开更多
基金C. B. G. acknowledges the support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China （Nos. 21671156 and 21301138）, the Tang Scholar Program from the Cyrus Tang Foundation, and the start-up fund from Xi＇an Jiaotong University. X. G. H acknowledges the programs supported by State Key Laboratory of Electrical Insulation and Power Equipment （No. EIPE17306） and Young Talent Support Plan of Xi＇an Jiaotong University. Y. D. Y. acknowledges the support from U.S. Department of Energy （No. DE-SC0002247）.
文摘Sub-100 nm hollow carbon nanospheres with thin shells are highly desirable anode materials for energy storage applications. However, their synthesis remains a great challenge with conventional strategies. In this work, we demonstrate that hollow carbon nanospheres of unprecedentedly small sizes （down to - 32.5 nm and with thickness of - 3.9 nm） can be produced on a large scale by a templating process in a unique reverse micelle system. Reverse micelles enable a spatially confined Stober process that produces uniform silica nanospheres with significantly reduced sizes compared with those from a conventional Stober process, and a subsequent well-controlled sol-gel coating process with a resorcinol-formaldehyde resin on these silica nanospheres as a precursor of the hollow carbon nanospheres. Owing to the short diffusion length resulting from their hollow structure, as well as their small size and microporosity, these hollow carbon nanospheres show excellent capacity and cycling stability when used as anode materials for lithium/sodium-ion batteries.
