Polystyrene-template-assisted synthesis of Li3VO4/C/rGO ternary composite with honeycomb-like structure for durable high-rate lithium ion battery anode materials

•Li3VO4/C/rGO ternary composite with honeycomb-like structure is prepared by taking advantage of spray drying method and polystyrene (PS) soft template.•Li3VO4/C/rGO composite electrode possesses rapid Li+ ions intercalation kinetics and good structure integrity.•Li3VO4/C/rGO composite exhibits outstanding high-rate performance and long cycle-life (the high reversible capacity of 312 mAh g−1 can be maintained after 1000 cycles at 10C).

Li3VO4/C/rGO (HC-LVO/C/G) ternary composite with honeycomb-like structure is successfully prepared through a simple spray drying method with polystyrene (PS) microspheres as soft template. In this characteristic structure, carbon-coated Li3VO4 nanoparticles are well wrapped by rGO sheets and uniformly distributed within the honeycomb-like micrometer-sized clusters. The double coating layers of amorphous carbon and rGO can avoid the direct exposure of Li3VO4 nanoparticles to the electrolyte and enhance the electronic conductivity. Meanwhile, the honeycomb-like structure can shorten the diffusion paths of Li+ ions and favors the relaxation of the strain/stress during cycling. The resultant HC-LVO/C/G composite exhibits significantly improved high-rate performance and long cycle-life (the high reversible capacity of 312 mAh g−1 can be maintained after 1000 cycles at 10 C) compared with the contrastive Li3VO4/C composite synthesized by a typical solid-state reaction method.

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