The great demand of high performance LIBs are in great need with the advent of plug-in hybrid vehicles.

The schematic above illustrate the mechanism of working in a LIB, that is to say, materials of anode, cathode and the electrolyte will play a great role in the development of supper batteries.

When put into practice, the capacity and life span are two characters which scientist care most about. Previously,LiM0x are used as the anode for its great theoretical capacities. However, there will also been a great expansion for the overall volume during the working cycle. Graphite was then chose as a better material due to its special layered structure. The insertion of Lithium ions in to the spacing of different layers will not cause a significant expansion of the overall voulme. However, six carbon atoms are needed to store one lithium ion, which induce a great lose of the theoretical capacity.Schematic of insertion mechanism of Lithium ions are illustrated below:

In order to improve this situation, carbon nanotubes(CNTs) are introduced due to its special one-dimensional structure.Nevertheless, the research of CNTs for anodes are quite recent. There are drawbacks which could not be overcome currently. In the first place, the consumption of lithium ions could never be neglected, what's more, there is a lack of voltage plateau during the discharging procedure. Those are both morphology dependent factors, which is supposed to be solved by decorating metal nanoparticles and core-shell composite anodes.