Abstract
To address the rapidly growing demand for high performance of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), the development of high-capacity anode materials should focus on the practical perspective of a facile synthetic process. In this work, iron oxide nanoparticles (Fe3O4 NPs) in situ grown on the surface of reduced graphene oxide (rGO), denoted as Fe3O4 NPs@rGO, were prepared through a facile one-pot synthesis under the wet-colloidal conditions. The synthesized Fe3O4 NPs showed that uniform Fe3O4 NPs, with a size of around 9 nm, were distributed on the rGO surfaces. When applied as an anode material for LIBs, the Fe3O4 NPs@rGO anode revealed a high reversible capacity of 1191 mAh g-1 at 1.0 A g-1 after 200 cycles. It also exhibited excellent rate performance, achieving 608 mAh g-1 at a current density of 5.0 A g-1 over 500 cycles, with improved electronic and ionic conductivities due to the rGO template. This suggested that practically available anode materials can be developed through our one-pot synthesis by in situ growing the Fe3O4 NPs.