Nitrogen-doped carbon sphere encapsulating antimony-cobalt antimony binary nanoseeds as promising anode material for high performance lithium ion battery

Abstract As a high capacity anode material, antimony and their alloys receive increasing research interest. However, the large volume change during cell cycling still hinders their practical application. Herein, a new type of nitrogen-doped carbon sphere encapsulating antimony-cobalt antimony binary nanoseeds is developed as anode material for Lithium ion batteries by a combined polydopamine coating and annealing method. The incorporation with CoSb2 and nitrogen-doped carbon matrix not only guarantees the high electronic conductivity, but could effectively alleviate the volume changes during cell cycling. The composites consisting of intermetallic CoSb2 electrode for LIBs exhibit the excellent charge/discharge rate capability of 320.2 mAh g−1 at 10.0 A g−1 and the high specific capacity of 878.2 mAh g−1 after 500 cycles at 1 A g−1, which offers a potential for the material design of the high performance of lithium-ion batteries.