Highly dispersible hollow nanospheres organized by ultra-small ZnFe2O4 subunits with enhanced lithium storage properties

Binary transition metal oxides are recently gaining prominence as promising anode materials for next-generation Li-ion batteries (LIBs), owing to its intrinsic merits. Herein, in our work, highly dispersible ZnFe2O4 hollow nanospheres (denoted as ZFO-HNSs) assembled by ultra-small ZFO subunits (average diameter ∼15 nm) have been prepared via one-pot and cost-effective method on a large scale. Surprisingly, the results of electrochemical test show that the ZFO-HNSs possess an excellent super-long cycle performance (1044 and 900 mA h g−1 at 500 and 1000 mA g−1 over 400 cycles, respectively), which break the previous documentary records among the as reported pure ZFO anode materials, excellent electrochemical performance benefits from the unique ZFO-HNSs are assembled by ultra-small ZFO subunits, thus providing a preview of their practical applications in LIBs. More meaningfully, other binary transition metal oxides (such as ZnCo2O4, ZnMn2O4 and CoFe2O4) can be further fabricated by our strategy, which maybe promote the further application of them in adsorption, photocatalysis, supercapacitor and microwave absorption fields.