Facile One-pot Synthesis of Highly Conductive SnO2/Graphene Composite for Lithium Ion Batteries

Graphene oxide (GO) based composite materials have shown promising performance for energy storage devices but their preparation requires complex multistep reduction processes due to their intrinsic low electrical conductivity. This study used edge oxidized graphene (EOG) to create a conductive SnO2/graphene composite suitable for lithium ion battery anodes by simply mixing EOG dispersion and Sn precursor, avoiding further reduction steps. The highly conductive SnO2/EOG composite readily integrated into the electrode layer without requiring a conducting carbon and achieved superior 556 mAh/g reversible capacity at 5 C scan rate, compared with SnO2/GO based electrodes (30 mAh/g). We experimentally achieved stable 900 mAh/g reversible capacity over 100 cycles at 0.33 C in the absence of conducting carbon for the proposed conductive SnO2/EOG composite. Conventional GO based electrodes prepared by identical methods exhibited poor electrochemical performance with low conductivity and rapidly fading capacity over the initial 20 cycles. The simple proposed method to constructing conductive the graphene composite enables rational compact electrode design for energy storage devices that could be upscaled to mass production with significant commercial application potential.