Mesoporous flower-like Co3O4/C nanosheet composites and their performance evaluation as anodes for lithium ion batteries

•Flower-like Co3O4/C nanosheets were fabricated by annealing organic-inorganic lamellar hybrids.•A fantastic and interesting microstructural evolution has been unveiled.•The composites exhibit excellent electrochemical performances.

Well-designed nanostructures have been regarded as keys for exploring new electrode materials for lithium-ion batteries. In this work, we reported a facile approach to prepare a novel flower-like clusters of Co3O4/C nanosheets via in situ pyrolysis of cheap inorganic-organic layered precursors. The as-prepared sample exhibits a two-dimensional architecture from well-graphitized carbon nanosheets embedded or anchored homogeneously by numerous Co3O4 nanoparticles (5–8 nm). When used as an anode material, the composite displays a high reversible capacity (1082 mAh g−1 at 100 mA g−1), superior rate capability (531 mAh g−1 at 2000 mA g−1) and excellent cycling stability. More importantly, a very interesting and amazing microstructural evolution from the lamellar precursors to nanosheets has been unveiled for the first time, which not only manifests the rich in structural variation of inorganic-organic hybrids in pyrolysis process, but also opens up new perspectives on the rational design and controllable fabrication of novel functional materials by utilizing such lamellar hybrids.

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