Connecting carbon nanotubes to polyoxometalate clusters for engineering high-performance anode materials

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) possess excellent structural and electronic properties and have been widely investigated as anode materials. Polyoxometalates (POMs) exhibit superior physical properties such as electronic versatility, redox characteristics and unique molecular structures. In this paper, we report the covalent modification of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) with organosilica-containing polyoxometalate (POM) of [Bu4N](4)[SiW11O39{O(SiCH2CH2CH2NH2 center dot HCl)(2)}] (SiW11-NH2) that leads to the formation of the nanocomposite material of CNTs-SiW11, which has been characterized by FT-IR, XRD, HR-TEM, XPS and Raman spectrum, etc. At a current density of 0.5 mA cm(-2), the application of CNTs-SiW11 nanocomposite as anode material in lithium batteries exhibits the first discharge capacity of 1189 mA h g(-1), and the second discharge capacity of 650 mA h g(-1), which remains stable up to 100 cycles. The CNTs-SiW11 nanocomposite exhibits high discharge capacity, good capacity retention and cycling stability.