Hollow Fe3O4/carbon with surface mesopores derived from MOFs for enhanced lithium storage performance

Hollow metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) and their derivatives have attracted more and more attention due to their high specific surface area and perfect morphological structure, which determine their large potential application in energy storage and catalysis fields. However, few researchers have carried out further modification on the outer shell of hollow MOFs, such as the perforation modification, which will endow hollow nanomaterials derived from MOFs with multifunctionality. In this paper, hollow MOFs of MIL-53(Fe) with perforated outer surface are successfully synthesized by using SiO2 nanospheres as the template via a self-assembly process induced by the coordination polymerization. The tightly packed mesopore structure makes the carbon outer shell of MOFs thinner, thus realizing the in-situ transformation from MOFs to hollow Fe3O4/carbon, which exhibits perfect capacity approaching 1270 mA h g-1 even after 200 cycles at 0.1 A g-1, as an anode material in lithium ion batteries (LIBs) application. This research provides a new strategy for the design and preparation of MOFs and their derivatives with multifunctionality for the energy applications.