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Scalable synthesis of sub-100 nm hollow carbon nanospheres for energy storage applications

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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.

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Acknowledgements

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).

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  1. Hongyu Zhao and Fan Zhang contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Materials Chemistry, Frontier Institute of Science and Technology, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, 710054, China

    Hongyu Zhao, Shumeng Zhang, Shengnan He & Chuanbo Gao

  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, 710054, China

    Hongyu Zhao, Fan Zhang, Fei Shen & Xiaogang Han

  3. Department of Chemistry, University of California, Riverside, CA, 92521, USA

    Yadong Yin

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  1. Hongyu Zhao
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  3. Shumeng Zhang
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Correspondence to Xiaogang Han or Chuanbo Gao.

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Zhao, H., Zhang, F., Zhang, S. et al. Scalable synthesis of sub-100 nm hollow carbon nanospheres for energy storage applications. Nano Res. 11, 1822–1833 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-017-1800-3

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