A one-step approach towards carbon-encapsulated hollow tin nanoparticles and their application in lithium batteries

A one-step approach towards carbon encapsulated hollow tin nanoparticles and their application in lithium batteries is presented. ATP-Sn, a tin-containing complex with active allyl groups that can be polymerized at relatively low temperatures was selected as precursor and solid state pyrolysis of ATP-Sn in a sealed quartz tube with a vacuum of 10-7Pa at 700°C resulted in a black powder that was subjected to purification by tituration, sonication, and centrifugation to obtain Sn nanoparticles encapsulated with carbon. X-ray diffraction demonstrated that the obtained product is a mixture of Sn and carbon, while transmission electron microscopy showed that the purified product was composed of very small nanoparticles with a diameter range of 5 to 20 nm and all the particles were encapsulated by an irregular carbon layer and about 60% of particles were hollow spheres.