Hydrothermal-template synthesis and electrochemical properties of CoO/nitrogen-doped hemisphere-porous graphene composites with 3D heterogeneous structure.

Despite the high capacity of CoO employed in lithium-ion battery anodes, the reduced conductivity and grievous volume change of CoO during long cycling of insertion/extraction of lithium-ions remain a challenge. Herein, an optimized nanocomposite, CoO/nitrogen-doped hemisphere-porous graphene composite (CoO/N-HPGC), is synthesized by a facile hydrothermal-template approach with polystyrene (PS) microspheres as a template. The characterization results demonstrate that CoO nanoparticles are densely anchored onto graphene layers, nitrogen elements are successfully introduced by carbamide and the nanocomposites maintain the hemispherical porous structure.