Template‐Based Engineering of Carbon‐Doped Co3O4 Hollow Nanofibers as Anode Materials for Lithium‐Ion Batteries

Co3O4 anode materials exhibit poor conductivity and a large volume change, rendering controlling of their nanostructure essential to optimize their lithium storage performance. Carbon‐doped Co3O4 hollow nanofibers (C‐doped Co3O4 HNFs), for the first time are synthesized using bifunctional polymeric nanofibers as template and carbon source. Compared with undoped Co3O4 HNFs and solid Co3O4 NFs, C‐doped Co3O4 HNFs feature a remarkably high specific capacity, excellent cycling stability, and superior rate capacity as anode materials for lithium‐ion batteries. The superior performance of C‐doped Co3O4 HNFs electrodes can be attributed to their structural features, which confer enhanced electron transportation and Li+ ion diffusion due to C‐doping, and tolerance for volume change due to the 1D hollow structure. Density functional theory calculations provide a good explanation of the observed enhanced conductivity in C‐doped Co3O4 HNFs.