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

High-performance anode materials play a crucial role in paving the development of next-generation lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). NiCo₂O₄, 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 Co₃O₄. 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 NiCo₂O₄@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 NiCo₂O₄@CNT composite. The CNTs combined with NiCo₂O₄ tightly act as both a conductive network for enhancing the ion/electron transfer and a support for mitigating the volume expansion of NiCo₂O₄. As a result, the NiCo₂O₄@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.