Fig. 5c. The enhanced performance of carbon-supported SnO2
nanowire arrays is mainly ascribed to the presence of the carbon
support, which can serve as a buffering layer to better cushion the
stress, reduce the volume variation, and protect the SnO2
nanowires from severe structural degradation during the insertion-
deinsertion process of lithium ions. Additionally, the discharge
capacity of carbon-supported SnO2 nanowire arrays is also
slightly higher than that of similar materials synthesized within
the SBA-15 nanorods template [34]. The possible reason is that the
mesoporous carbon template used in this work has long
mesoporous channels and the derived SnO2 nanowires possess
high aspect ratio accordingly, which provide a direct expressway
for efficient Li+ transport. Moreover, the carbon supporting layer in
this work was obtained by calcination of phenolic resin under a
relatively high temperature of 800 C, which is helpful to enhance
the conductivity of the electrode