A simple thermal oxidation approach has been used to fabricate nanostructured NiO electrodes at a temperature as low as 400 °C in air. Galvanostatic battery testing showed that the NiO electrode exhibits excellent rate capability and high capacity. The performances can be attributed to its favorable morphology and the better electrical contact between NiO and Ni.

Mesoporous NiO nanosheet networks with a thickness of more than 5 μm were fabricated on Ni foam for application as an electrode in Li ion batteries. Benefiting from the favorable macro/meso-porous structures as well as the great loading of the synthesized NiO, the electrode exhibits high capacity and excellent rate capability.

We propose an effective strategy to engineer a unique kind of porous carbon cuboid with tightly anchored cobalt/cobalt oxide nanoparticles (PCC–CoO_x) that exhibit outstanding electrochemical performance for many key aspects of lithium-ion battery electrodes. The host carbon cuboid features an ultra-polar surface reflected by its high hydrophilicity and rich surface defects due to high heteroatom doping (N-/O-doping both higher than 10 atom%) as well as hierarchical pore systems. We loaded the porous carbon cuboid with cobalt/cobalt oxide nanoparticles through an impregnation process followed by calcination treatment. The resulting PCC–CoO_x anode exhibits superior rate capability (195 mA h g⁻¹ at 20 A g⁻¹) and excellent cycling stability (580 mA h g⁻¹ after 2000 cycles at 1 A g⁻¹ with only 0.0067% capacity loss per cycle). Impressively, even after an ultra-long cycle life exceeding 10 000 cycles at 5 A g⁻¹, the battery can recover to 1050 mA h g⁻¹ at 0.1 A g⁻¹, perhaps the best performance demonstrated so far for lithium storage in cobalt oxide-based electrodes. This study provides a new perspective to engineer long-life, high-power metal oxide-based electrodes for lithium-ion batteries through controlling the surface chemistry of carbon host materials.

NiO nanocone arrays were fabricated by a two-step approach for high power Li-ion battery applications. Galvanostatic battery tests show that the electrode can deliver a capacity up to 1058 mA h g⁻¹ after 100 cycles at a low rate of 0.4 C and a capacity higher than 436 mA h g⁻¹ even at a rate as high as 20 C.