Calcination-Free Synthesis of Well-Dispersed and Sub-10 nm Spinel Ferrite Nanoparticles as High-Performance Anode Materials for Lithium-Ion Batteries: A Case Study of CoFe2O4

Spinel ferrites are promising anode materials for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) owing to their high theoretical specific capacities. However, their practical application is impeded by inherent low conductivity and severe volume expansion, which can be surpassed by increasing the surface-to-volume ratio of nanoparticles. Currently, most methods produce spinel ferrite nanoparticles with large size and severe aggregation, degrading their electrochemical performance. In this study, a low-temperature aminolytic route was designed to synthesize sub-10 nm CoFe2O4 nanoparticles with good dispersion through carefully exploiting the reaction of acetates and oleylamine. The performance of CoFe2O4 nanoparticles obtained by a traditional co-precipitation method was also investigated for comparison. This work demonstrates that CoFe2O4 nanoparticles synthesized by the aminolytic route are promising as anode materials for LIBs. Besides, this method can be extended to design other spinel ferrites for energy storage devices with superior performance by simply changing the starting material, such as MnFe2O4, MgFe2O4, ZnFe2O4, and so on.

Automated summary

Spinel ferrites are considered promising anode materials for LIBs due to their high theoretical specific capacities, but their practical application is hindered by low conductivity and volume expansion issues. This study successfully synthesized sub-10 nm CoFe2O4 nanoparticles with good dispersion through an aminolytic route, showing great potential as anode materials for LIBs. Additionally, this method can be extended to design other spinel ferrites for energy storage devices with superior performance.