A study on the synthesis and electrochemical properties of CuFe₂O₄ cubes as anode material for lithium-ion batteries

Metal oxide materials have many times of the theoretical capacity of commercial graphite anode, but the volume expansion of metal oxide materials in the lithium storage process leads to the pulverization and shedding of active materials, which affects the cycle life of lithium-ion batteries. In this paper, hollow CuFe₂O₄ cubic particles were synthesized by hydrothermal method using metal organic frameworks (MOFs) Prussian blue micro-cubes as self-sacrificial templates, and were used as anode materials for lithium ion batteries. The particle size of CuFe₂O₄ cubes is between 300 nm and 500 nm, and the thickness of CuFe₂O₄ shell is about 40 nm. After 200 cycles at a current density of 200 mA/g, the discharge capacity of CuFe₂O₄ cubes still reaches 742.4 mAh/g. The excellent performance is attributed to the hollow structure of CuFe₂O₄ cubes, which could effectively alleviate the volume expansion caused by lithium storage and prolong the cycle life of lithium-ion batteries.