Along with fast development of compact mobile electronic devices, electric vehicles and large scale electricity storage for renewable energies, the demand on lithium batteries for increasing their energy, power, safety and lowering their cost of become a focal issue in today’s society and R&D communities. It is well recognized that the performances of lithium battery depend strongly on electrode materials, and the structure, especially the surface structure, of electrode determines the density of active sites for Li conversion reaction and the channels for Li⁺ intercalation/deintercalation. Therefore, it is of crucial importance in controlling the transport kinetics of lithium ions and promoting the performances of lithium battery through tuning the structure of electrode materials.

This communication reports our recent progresses in tuning the surface structure and property of electrode materials. Different materials including nanostructured metal oxides, habit-tuned LNMO nanoplates, NCM hexagonal nanobricks, graphene-based sulfur and RuO₂/MnO₂ nanorods were designed and control-synthesized, and served as electrodes in lithium ion battery, lithium-sulfur battery and lithium-air battery. The results demonstrated clearly the significant enhancement of electrochemical performances of specific capacity, cycleability and rate property of the as-prepared electrode materials with well-defined structure. Besides the active materials of electrode, the guar gum binder that is a low-cost, environmentally friendly and multi-functional binder for the next generation lithium-ion batteries with high energy density has been developed and applied in both anode and cathode of lithium ion batteries.

Acknowledgements: This work was supported by NSFC (21621091,1373008).

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