摘要

The self-sacrificial template approach based on Kirkendall effect in crystal growth has been widely employed in fabrication of hollow inorganic micro/nanostructures in recent years. Nevertheless, almost all reported works so far are limited only to unitary or binary template methods to achieve hollow multicomponent materials. In this work, we describe a new ternary self-template method to fabricate hollow multi-component Li1.4Mn0.6Co0.2Ni0.2O2+delta (LMCN) micro/nano-spheres, which further simplifies the synthetic process and facilitates the homogenization of all metal elements to improve the performance. By a facile process of adjusting the values of NH4HCO3 precipitant to prepare spherical carbonate precursor, metal oxides with different porous can be developed after the heat treatment of the precursor. It is proved that the metal oxide with more porosity is beneficial for the formation of hollow structured multi-component cathode material treated at the same temperature. When tested in lithium-ion batteries, the hollow structured LMCN exhibits outstanding electrochemical performance comprising prominent rate capabilities (151.3 mAh g(-1) at a high rate of 10 C) and greatly prolonged cyclic lifespan (87.8% of capacity retention over 200 cycles at 2 C) in contrast to solid counterpart. The excellent performance can be attributed to the hierarchical macro/nano-porous hollow structures, which are controllably synthesized by easily adjusting the values of NH4HCO3 precipitant based on the ternary self-template method.