In-situ synthesis and application of hollow H-SnS/MXene@C nanobox for advanced LIBs and NIBs anodes

In this paper, cubic ZnSn(OH)6 with MXene were firstly in-situ synthesized, and subsequently vulcanized and etched to obtain hollow SnS nanoboxes with MXene coating by carbon layer (referred to as H-SnS/MXene@C). The composition and surface chemical state of H-SnS/MXene@C were characterized by XRD and XPS, respectively. The microscopic morphology of H-SnS/MXene@C was analyzed and characterized in detail by SEM and TEM, and the results show that the hollow SnS nano-boxes formed an effective connection with the MXene nanosheets. When used as LIBs anode, the H-SnS/MXene@C maintained ∼707 mAh/g after 200 cycles at 0.5 A/g current density. As a NIBs anode material, the H-SnS/MXene@C delivered ∼402 mAh/g after 150 cycles at 0.5 A/g current density. In addition, a detail simulation/calculation revealed that H-SnS/MXene@C demonstrated a higher pseudocapacitance (83.2 % for LIBs and 74.4 % for NIBs at a scan rate of 2 mV/s, respectively). The synergistic effect of the highly conductive MXene and the three-dimensional hollow cubic structure could effectively provide an efficient channel for charge transfer and ionic diffusion in H-SnS/MXene@C anode.