Formation of Fe3O4 Nanoparticles Embedded in an Olive-Shaped Carbon Skeleton as a High-Performance Anode Material

Fe3O4 is a potential anode material for lithium-ion batteries, because of its environmentally friendliness, high capacity, and inexpensive availability. However, Fe3O4 causes a severe capacity attenuation, owing to a large volume change, and it has a poor rate capability, owing to low conductivity. In this work, Fe3O4 nanoparticles embedded in an olive-shaped carbon skeleton were prepared through the one-step pyrolysis of metal-organic framework (MOF) precursors in a nitrogen atmosphere. The Fe3O4 nanoparticles were evenly embedded in the olive-shaped carbon skeleton and the Fe3O4 particle size was around 23 nm in width and 38 nm in length, which exhibits enhanced cycling and rate performance. The prepared Fe3O4/C material achieves a high initial charge and discharge capacity of 1423.0 mAhg(-1) and 925.5 mAhg(-1), respectively, and shows a remarkable cycle-stable specific capacity of 877.0 mAhg(-1) after 80 cycles at 0.5 C. High specific discharge capacities of 810, 720, 660, 585, 516, 486, and 460 mAhg(-1) were obtained at 0.5, 1, 2, 6, 12, 15, and 20 C, respectively.