Highly dispersible hollow nanospheres organized by ultra-small ZnFe2O4 subunits with enhanced lithium storage properties

Binary transition metal oxides are recently gaining prominence as promising anode materials for nextgeneration Li-ion batteries (LIBs), owing to its intrinsic merits. Herein, in our work, highly dispersible ZnFe2O4 hollow nanospheres (denoted as ZFO-HNSs) assembled by ultra-small ZFO subunits (average diameter similar to 15 nm) have been prepared via one-pot and cost-effective method on a large scale. Surprisingly, the results of electrochemical test show that the ZFO-HNSs possess an excellent super-long cycle performance (1044 and 900 mA h g(-1) at 500 and 1000 mA g(-1) over 400 cycles, respectively), which break the previous documentary records among the as reported pure ZFO anode materials, excellent electrochemical performance benefits from the unique ZFO-HNSs are assembled by ultra-small ZFO subunits, thus providing a preview of their practical applications in LIBs. More meaningfully, other binary transition metal oxides (such as ZnCo2O4, ZnFe2O4 and CoFe2O4 ) can be further fabricated by our strategy, which maybe promote the further application of them in adsorption, photocatalysis, supercapacitor and microwave absorption fields. (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.