Chitosan modulated engineer tin dioxide nanoparticles well dispersed by reduced graphene oxide for high and stable lithium-ion storage.

Tin based materials are widely investigated as a potential anode material for lithium-ion batteries. Effectively dispersing SnO nanocrystals in carbonaceous supporting skeleton using simplified methods is both promising and challenging. In this work, water soluble chitosan (CS) chains are employed to modulate the redox coprecipitation reaction between stannous chloride (SnCl) and few-layered graphene oxide (GO), where the excessive restacking of the corresponding reduced graphene oxide sheets (RGO) has been effectively inhibited and the grain size of the in-situ formed SnO nanoparticles have been significantly controlled.