Graphene anchored with ZrO2 nanoparticles as anodes of lithium ion batteries with enhanced electrochemical performance

A green and facile strategy was reported to synthesize the composite of graphene decorated with ZrO2 nanoparticles as a good candidate for the anode material of lithium-ion batteries. ZrO2 nanoparticles are uniformly anchored on the surface of graphene with an average size of 5.5 nm. This graphene/ZrO2 composite shows high specific capacity, high coulomb efficiency, excellent rate performance and cycling stability due to the sandwich-like stable structure with ZrO2 as the inert pillar supporting graphene, which offers more active sites for Li+ insertion. The strong interaction between graphene and ZrO2 plays a key role in maintaining the structure stability against the irreversible volume change during Li+ insertion/extraction.