Self-templated porous hierarchical SnO2 ceramics with enhanced lithium storage capacity

Porous hierarchical SnO2 ceramics is achieved by oxidizing the flowerlike SnS2 precursors, which are obtained via hydrothermal reaction between SnCl4 and thioacetamide. The release rate of the sulfur ions from the sulfur source plays the most important role in the formation of flowerlike microstructures which define the morphology of the resulted SnO2. The obtained SnO2 by annealing exhibits a porous hierarchical microstructure with large surface-to-volume ratio because of the large and small pores between and in the flowers. The porous hierarchical SnO2 ceramics shows a promising capacity of 1645.5 mA h g−1 at the current of 100 mA g−1, and remains 660.5 mA h g−1 after 20 cycles when used as anode of lithium-ion batteries. The enhanced cycling performance than SnO2 nanoparticles should be due to that the porous hierarchical microstructure could provide more reaction sites and give channels making Li+ transport more efficiently.