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

Co 3 O 4 anode materials exhibit poor conductivity and a large volume change, rendering controlling of their nanostructure essential to optimize their lithium storage performance. Carbon‐doped Co 3 O 4 hollow nanofibers (C‐doped Co 3 O 4 HNFs), for the first time are synthesized using bifunctional polymeric nanofibers as template and carbon source. Compared with undoped Co 3 O 4 HNFs and solid Co 3 O 4 NFs, C‐doped Co 3 O 4 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 Co 3 O 4 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 Co 3 O 4 HNFs.