One-pot synthesis strategy of sea urchin-like hollow microspheres comprising MoOx nanorods attached via N-doped C as anodes for lithium-ion batteries

A one-pot synthetic strategy that takes only 2.3 s was developed for the fabrication of sea urchin-like hollow microspheres comprising MoOx nanorods attached via N-doped C for the first time. The inclusion of diethylenetriamine as a starting material played a key role in the formation of MoOx nanorods constituting the hollow shell. Additionally, the MoOx nanorods were coated and entangled with N-doped C, which established a rapid pathway for electrons and Li ions during the charge-discharge process when used as anodes for Li-ion batteries. Besides, numerous MoOx nanorods grafted in the shell provided efficient one-dimensional electron transport along the longitudinal direction, enabling more efficient interaction with the Li-ions. Therefore, superior cycling performance was achieved: the nanostructure produced a discharge capacity of 794 mA h g(-1) after 400 cycles at 0.2 A g(-1) with a low decay rate of 0.074% per cycle. Discharge capacities of 891, 589, 358, 250, and 193 mA h g(-1) were obtained at current densities of 0.5, 1.5, 3.0, 5.0, and 7.0 A g(-1), respectively. The facile synthetic strategy to prepare hollow microspheres using spray pyrolysis has important potential for the mass production of hierarchically hollow nanostructures in a wide range of fields, including energy storage.