Abstract
Tin-based materials have emerged as promising anode candidates for advanced lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) due to their high theoretical capacity (e.g., 994 mAh·g(-1) for Li(4).(4)Sn), moderate operating potential, and natural abundance. However, Tin-based materials suffer from severe volume expansion (>300%) and rapid capacity decay during cycling. To mitigate these challenges, a composite composed of tin-based materials and porous carbon (PC), i.e., SnO(2)/SnS(2)@PC, was prepared by calcining a mixture of SnO(2), petroleum asphalt and calcium carbonate at high temperature, where petroleum asphalt acted as the carbon and sulfur resource, and calcium carbonate acted as a pore-forming template. The prepared SnO(2)/SnS(2)@PC composite had a specific surface area of 190 m(2)·g(-1) with total pore volume 0.386 cm(3)·g(-1), and delivered an initial specific capacity of 1431 mAh·g(-1) and retained 722 mAh·g(-1) at 100th cycle at 0.2 A·g(-1), which is nearly three folds that of the actual capacity (~260 mAh·g(-1)) of commercial graphite. The novelty of this work lies in that the abundant sulfur element in petroleum asphalt was fully utilized to react in situ with nano SnO(2) to generate SnS(2) and form a composite with high specific capacity and good structural stability, along with greatly reducing the emission of the harmful element sulfur into the atmosphere.