One-step synthesis Fe3N surface-modified Fe3O4 nanoparticles with excellent lithium storage ability

The Fe3N modified Fe3O4 nanoparticles with an excellent performance in lithium-ion batteries were prepared via a one-step and an efficient method. The layer of Fe3N could significantly decrease the variation of volume and enhance the conductivity of Fe3O4 simultaneously during the reaction of lithium ions in the charge-discharge process. There are two main advantages of this material: (1) their size distribution, ranging from 100 to 500 nm and (2) the fact that these particles are connected with each other by the Fe3N layer. These two features allow such material to exhibit a high reversible capacity of 739 and 620 mAh g-1 after each 60 cycles at the current density of 50 and 200 mA g-1, respectively. More importantly, since its introduction, this new concept of coating metal oxides with a layer of metal nitride to form core-shell structured metal oxide@metal nitride can be widely applied in the fields of catalysis, electrochemistry, energy, environmental and materials science with improved performance. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.