Green Fabrication of Hierarchical CuO Hollow Micro/Nanostructures and Enhanced Performance as Electrode Materials for Lithium-ion Batteries

Engineering hierarchical CuO hollow micro/nanostructures was realized by a tyrosine-assisted green strategy. The morphology, composition, and phase structure of as-prepared powders were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), which showed that the sample was assembled from CuO nanosheets with average diameter of ca. 250 nm, self-wrapping to form hollow interiors with an outer diameter of 1.5-3 mu m. The improved electrochemical performance toward Li uptake-release verifies their potential application as anode materials in lithium-ion batteries, which attributes to a three-dimensional current collector network and a chemical/mechanical robustness buffer of the as-formed novel CuO structure.