Nitrogen-Doped Porous Ag–C@Co<sub>3</sub>O<sub>4</sub> Nanocomposite for Boosting Lithium Ion Batteries
GE Zhi-xin, Lei Jiang, Fenghao Liang, Zhe Zhang, Daoning Wu, Wenkai Ye, Ning Han, Yichuan Rui, Wei Zhang, Bohejin Tang
Abstract
In this work, nitrogen-doped Ag-based metal–organic gels (Ag-MOGs) are introduced for the first time in the field of lithium ion batteries (LIBs) with good electrochemical performances. As a novel approach of the nitrogen-doping method for LIBs, Ag–carbon (Ag–C) as the precursor is formed from Ag-MOGs and Co3O4 nanoparticles are prepared by different pyrolysis processes and maintain different particle sizes as the primary active materials. Co3O4 nanoparticles with smaller sizes (10–15 nm) covering the surface of Ag–C show good electrochemical performance because of the good conductivity of silver particles and the nitrogen doping of Ag–C. In particular, the composite shows a high rate capability of 516.4 mAh g–1 (5 A g–1) and strong cycling stability of 1275.78 mAh g–1 at the current density of 100 mA g–1 even after 100 cycles.