Hierarchical composites of NiCo2S4 nanorods grown on carbon nanofibers as anodes for high-performance lithium ion batteries

The increasing requirement for clean energy storage has urged the advancement of lithium ion batteries (LIBs) with high specific capacity and cycling stability. In this work, we report a facile method to synthesize hybrid membranes of NiCo2S4 nanorod arrays uniformly grown onto each carbon nanofiber (NiCo2S4/CNF), which as anode materials can achieve high performance for LIBs. The conductive networks of CNFs can facilitate the electron transport at the interfaces and diffusion of ions to readily react with NiCo2S4, thus leading to increased lithium storage. The CNFs can mitigate the drastic expansion/contraction of NiCo2S4 nanorods, resulting in enhanced cycling stability. As a consequence, the LIBs with NiCo2S4/CNF hybrid membranes as anode materials exhibit high capacity (1060 mA h/g) at 0.2 A/g and good durability for 100 cycles.