Abstract
Recently, combination of ductile carbonaceous materials with the metallic Sn has received a great deal of interest to be a novel anode material for lithium ion batteries, because of their higher capacity than the conventional graphite anodes and better cycleability than the pure Sn anodes. Electrochemical performance of the Sn/C composite anodes is influenced by the material system, particle size and size distribution of Sn as well as the amount of deposited Sn. This study revealed that a favorable Sn/C composite anode exhibited reduced size and uniformly distributed tin particles. The crystal structure, morphology and elemental distribution were analyzed by XRD patterns, SEM and EPMA, respectively. The carbothermal-reducted Sn/Mesophase graphite powder (MGP) composite anodes exhibited much higher capacity than the bare MGP, and the initial efficiency was also much higher than the metallic tin anode in literatures.