Polyvinylpyrrolidone-regulated synthesis of hollow manganese vanadium oxide microspheres as a high-performance anode for lithium-ion batteries.

We report the fabrication of well-defined phase-pure MnVO hollow microspheres (h-MVO), assembled from the porous plate-like building blocks, via a facile solvothermal method followed by annealing, with the assistance of polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) as the structure-regulating agent. The microstructure dependent electrochemical properties of h-MVO as anode materials for lithium ion batteries (LIBs) are investigated, and excellent lithium storage performance is obtained with a reversible capacity of 1707 mAh g after 700 cycles at 0.5 A g, revealing that the unique hierarchical framework of the h-MVO microspheres with hollow interiors and porous building blocks could not only accelerate the transport of Li ions and electrolyte, but also efficiently suppress the electrode pulverization upon cycling. More importantly, we demonstrate that PVP can be an effective agent to tune the microstructures, which would be promising for the development of high-performance energy storage devices.