1.Center for Materials Chemistry, Frontier Institute of Science and Technology,Xi’an Jiaotong University,Xi’an,China;2.Center of Nanomaterials for Renewable Energy, Key Lab of Smart Grid of Shaanxi Province, State Key Laboratory of Electrical Insulation and Power Equipment,Xi’an Jiaotong University,Xi’an,China;3.Department of Chemistry,University of California,Riverside,USA
Abstract:
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 Stöber process that produces uniform silica nanospheres with significantly reduced sizes compared with those from a conventional Stöber 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.
