Design and synthesis of porous nano-sized Sn@C/graphene electrode material with 3D carbon network for high-performance lithium-ion batteries

• Porous nano-sized Sn@C/graphene electrode material was designed and prepared.
• The preparation method presented here can avoid the agglomeration of nanoparticles.
• The prepared Sn@C/graphene electrode material exhibits outstanding cyclability.

Tin is a promising high-capacity anode material for lithium-ion batteries, but it usually suffers from the problem of poor cycling stability due to the large volume change during the charge–discharge process. In this article, porous nano-sized Sn@C/graphene electrode material with three-dimensional carbon network was designed and prepared. Reducing the size of the Sn particles to nanoscale can mitigate the absolute strain induced by the large volume change during lithiation–delithiation process, and retard particle pulverization. The porous structure can provide a void space, which helps to accommodate the volume changes of the Sn nanoparticles during the lithium uptake-release process. The carbon shell can avoid the aggregation of the Sn nanoparticles on the same piece of graphene and detachment of the pulverized Sn particles during the charge–discharge process. The 3D carbon network consisted of graphene sheets and carbon shells can not only play a structural buffering role in minimizing the mechanical stress caused by the volume change of Sn, but also keep the overall electrode highly conductive during the lithium uptake-release process. As a result, the as-prepared Sn@C/graphene nanocomposite as an anode material for lithium-ion batteries exhibited outstanding cyclability. The reversible specific capacity is almost constant from the tenth cycle to the fiftieth cycle, which is about 600 mA h g−1. The strategy presented in this work may be extended to improve the cycle performances of other high-capacity electrode materials with large volume variations during charge–discharge processes.