Self-catalytic approach to construct graphitized carbon shell for metal oxide: In-situ triggering mechanism and high-performance lithium-ion batteries applications

Carbon modification is one of the most important strategies to boost the performance of the material in many applications, where the carbon modified metal (oxide) anode gains great attention in metal-ion batteries due to their high capacity and improved stability. However, a close-knit carbon coating through an efficient and cost-effective approach remains challenging for satisfying the demand in practical application. Herein, a new in-situ self-catalytic approach by acetylene treatment is presented, in which a tunable graphitized carbon layer can be knitted on the metal (oxide) directly to produce many kinds of core-shell structured metal (oxide)@C hybrid materials. The in-situ triggering mechanism of forming graphitized carbon is discussed in detail using the model of MnO. Then, we find that the as-prepared MnO@C exhibits an extremely high lithium storage capacity of 1077 mAh g(-1) and good rate capacities at 10 A g(-1) over 500 cycles. In addition, a new full battery of MnO@C parallel to LiNi0.8Co0.1Mn0.1O2 is constructed, where the high capacity retention of 73.1% at 0.5C over 250 cycles is well confirmed. This study not only opens a new avenue to prepare more carbon decorated functional materials but also explores the potential applications of metal (oxide)-based materials for high-performance rechargeable batteries.