Morphological control of three-dimensional carbon nanotube anode for high-capacity lithium-ion battery

In this paper, we report the results of modulating the processing conditions (mainly, temperature) of a two-step method consisting of sputtering deposition of a Ni catalytic layer and chemical vapor deposition (CVD) of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) on a three-dimensional (3D)-structured Cu mesh to control the morphology of CNTs for advanced Li-ion battery (LIB) applications. We disclosed that CNT growth at a low temperature (700 °C) produced small-diameter CNTs (CNT-S) with an average diameter of >20 nm, while that at a high temperature (750 °C) produced largediameter CNTs (CNT-L) with an average diameter of 200-300 nm. The high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HR-TEM) and Raman analyses manifested poorly crystalline CNTs for both samples. CNT-S showed a specific capacity of 476mAh g^-1, which is >176% superior to that of CNT-L (271mAhg^-1) and >128% higher than the theoretical capacity of the state-of-the-art graphites and recently reported nanostructured carbon-based anode materials.