Co₃O₄/porous electrospun carbon nanofibers as anodes for high performance Li-ion batteries

This paper reports a facile route to synthesize porous carbon nanofibers containing cobalt and cobalt oxide nanoparticles (CoO_x/PCNF) as anodes for Li-ion batteries. The Co₃O₄/PCNF electrode delivers a remarkable capacity of 952 mA h g^-1 after 100 cycles and equally excellent rate performance at high current densities. There are several ameliorating mechanisms responsible for the observation: namely (i) high theoretical capacity of Co₃O₄ particles; (ii) enhanced electronic conductivity and Li ion transfer due to the graphene layers surrounding the Co₃O₄ particles; (iii) the soft CNF matrix serving as the stress buffer to relieve the volumetric stresses arising from Li ion insertion into the Co₃O₄ particles. The comparison of electrochemical performance with previous studies based on similar CoO or Co₃O₄/carbon composite anodes indicates that the above value is among the highest.