Growth Mechanism and Electrochemical Properties of Porous Hollow Tin Dioxide Nanospheres

Porous hollow SnO2 nanospheres were prepared by means of enforced Sn2+ hydrolysis method under hydrochloric acid medium. These hollow nanospheres with an average diameter of 220 nm had a very thin shell thickness of about 40 nm and were surrounded by elongated octahedral-like nanoparticles with the apex oriented outside. The experimental conditions, such as HCl content, reaction temperature and time directly dominated the morphology, structure and crystallinity of the obtained samples. A pre-oxidation-nucleation-growth mechanism and inside-out Ostwald-ripening method was proposed on the basis of the previous research and time-dependent experiments. Electrochemical tests showed that the porous hollow SnO2 nanospheres exhibited improved cycling performance for anode materials of lithium-ion batteries, which retained a high reversible capacity of 540.0 mAhg(-1), and stable cyclic retention at 120th cycle.