Cotton-templated fabrication of hierarchical SnO2 mesoporous microtubes as the anode material of lithium ion battery

• Hierarchical SnO2 mesoporous microtubes were fabricated by a sonochemical method.
• The effect of calcination temperature on the SnO2 microtubes was studied.
• Cotton was used as template for preparing anode materials of lithium ion batteries.
• The method is facile, cheap and environmental.

SnO2 mesoporous microtube materials were fabricated by a sonochemical method from biological template of cotton, which was used as the anode material of lithium ion battery. The cotton fibers were first given ultrasound treatment in SnCl2 solution. Then the microtube structure was obtained after calcinations at different temperatures of 500, 650 and 800 °C. The scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images showed the morphology of the SnO2 mesoporous microtube which was composed of SnO2 nanoparticles. The effect of calcinations temperature on the electrochemical performance of SnO2 microtubes was studied. The results showed that the cycle performance of the sample under 500 °C was relatively better than those of the samples under 650 and 800 °C, exhibiting an initial specific capacity of 709 mA h g−1 which was calculated based on the overall electrode loading and retaining 393.9 mA h g−1 up to 20 cycles.

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