A novel MoS2 nanosheets-decorated Sb@Sb2S3@C tubular composites as anode material for high performance lithium ion battery

Antimony (Sb) is an attractive anode material for lithium-ion batteries with high theoretical capacity. However, its practical application is greatly hindered by the rapid capacity fading due to the large volume expansion during lithiation. Tuning the morphology of active materials at the nanoscale or designing reasonable components is essential to address this issue. Employing an antimony sulfide nanorod as semi-sacrificial template, here, we successfully synthesize one-dimensional MoS 2 sheets-decorated Sb@Sb 2 S 3 @C(MoS 2 -Sb@Sb 2 S 3 @C) nano-structure via facile thermal carbonization of Mo-polypyrrole complex coating film. During annealing, metallic Sb from the partial reduction of Sb 2 S 3 nanorods is embedded into amorphous carbon nanotubes that are derived from polypyrrole and simultaneously MoS 2 nanosheets forms on the surface of Sb-Sb 2 S 3 -C nanostructures. This unique hierarchical tubular composite not only can serve as robust skeleton frameworks for accommodating volume changes of metallic Sb and Sb 2 S 3 during cell cycling, but also are characterized by high electronic conductivity (because of the amorphous carbon nanotubes and metallic Sb) and abundant active sites, both of which are beneficial for the improvement of Li-ion storage properties. As expected, the MoS 2 -Sb@Sb 2 S 3 @C composite exhibit a high specific capacity (1596 mAh g −1  at 0.1 A g −1 ), high rate capability (481 mAh g −1  at 5 A g −1 and 355 mAh g −1  at 8 A g −1 ), and stable cycling performance (760 mAh g −1 maintained after 100 cycles at 1 A g −1 ). Our work potentially sheds some light on future development of alloy-type anodes for battery applications.