Engineering a polyaniline nanoneedles-coated multi-layered Co3O4/NiO microsphere as high-performance Li-ion battery anode

High energy-storage Li-ion battery needs a high-capacity anode. However, current graphite-based anode doesn’t meet this requirement, thus developing high performance anode materials is highly needed and significant. Here, we provide a rational engineering of a multi-layered hollow structure combining with surface coating of polyamine (PANI) layer, forming a Co3O4/NiO@PANI hybrid using for Li-ion battery anode. PANI is able to effectively improve the conductivity of active materials; besides, PANI is flexible, which can prevent the collapse of the structure caused by volume-expansion during charge and discharge. The multi-layered morphology improves the utilization ratio of voids inside the conventional hollow structured materials, which is significant to improve capacity in practical applications. The Co3O4/NiO@PANI hybrid-based anode shows a capacity of 1049 mAh g−1 along with a Coulombic efficiency of 99.3% after 100 cycles of 0.2 A g−1. Rate-performance of Co3O4/NiO@PANI exceeds that of the bare Co3O4/NiO. It is believed that the hierarchical structure combining multi-layered hollow morphology with surface coating of conductive polymer presented here would find broad applications for developing high-performance energy-storage hybrids.