A Facile Synthesis of Flower-Like CuO as Anode Materials for Lithium (Sodium) Ion Battery Applications

Flower-like CuO has been prepared by a mild solution-phase route and successive annealing procedure. CuO flowers were composed of nanorods with the thickness of 10-20 nm. The CuO was used as active anode material for both lithium-ion battery (LIB) and sodium-ion battery (NIB) applications. The results show that the initial specific capacity of CuO electrode is about 938 mAh/g and a good cycling stability for LIBs. As anode material for NIB, the initial capacity of CuO flowers is about 660.9 mAh/g, but the cycling performance of NIB is not good, which is may be due to the large size of Na+ ions. The carbon-coated CuO flowers were synthesized using glucose as carbon source. The carbon-coated CuO as an electrode material has higher reversible capacity (317.4 mAh/g) and better cycling performance in NIBs, compared with the bare CuO. The nanostructured CuO could be a potential anode material for the application of NIBs after improving the cycling stability.