Preparing CuBr particles onto the commercial copper foil surface to greatly boost the electrochemical performance of tin dioxide.

A novel finding that rock-shaped CuBr particles can be prepared onto the commercial copper foil surface (denoted as CuBr/Cu) through using a room temperature soaking approach is presented for the first time in this preliminary work. The soaking solution only contained 0.7 M CuSO4 and a very small amount of benzyltrimethylammonium bromide (C10H16NBr, denoted as BTABr). The commercial bare copper foil was called as foil o, and the samples of CuBr/Cu fabricated in the presence of 5 mM, 10 mM, and 15 mM BTABr were respectively nominated as foil a, b, and c. Correspondingly, the tin dioxide (SnO2) electrodes prepared using foil o, a, b, and c were noted as electrode o, a, b, and c, respectively. To one's surprise, in comparison with electrode o, electrode a, b, and c delivered a significantly promoted electrochemical performance. For instance, the initial discharge capacity (DC) of electrode b measured at 0.2 A g−1 was about 1249 mAh g−1, being about 1.78 times that of electrode o (699 mAh g−1). More than that, even at 1.0 A g−1 after 50 cycles, the DC value of electrode b (194 mAh g−1) was still measured to be about 1.88 times that of electrode o (103 mAh g−1). A soaking method to prepare rock-shaped CuBr particles and a groundbreaking approach to dramatically promote the electrochemical performance of the routine SnO2 electrode are presented in this work, which is very beneficial to both the progress of CuBr-based material research field and the further development of SnO2 related lithium ion batteries (LIBs). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]