Conversion/alloying materials, such as transition metal (TM)‐doped ZnO, are showing superior performance over pure ZnO due to the presence of the TM, enabling the reversible formation of Li₂O due to the enhanced electronic conductivity within the single particle once being reduced to the metallic state upon lithiation. Herein, the impact of introducing Co as representative TM at the atomic level in ZnO compared with mixtures of nano‐ and microsized CoO and ZnO is investigated. While even rather simple mixtures provide higher capacities than pure ZnO, an intimate mixing of nanoparticulate CoO and ZnO leads to a further increase due to the more homogeneous dispersion of Co. Nonetheless, the “atomic mixing” via doping still provides the highest capacities—for both nano‐ and microparticles, thus highlighting the importance of the very fine distribution of Co (and generally the TM) for realizing effective electron conduction pathways to enable the reversible formation of Li₂O.

中文翻译：

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锂离子电池基于ZnO的转换/合金负极：混合亲和力的影响

转化/合金材料（例如过渡金属（TM）掺杂的ZnO）由于存在TM而表现出优于纯ZnO的性能，从而可逆地形成Li ₂由于单颗粒内增强的电子传导性，一旦被锂化后被还原成金属态，则为O。在此，研究了与纳米级和微米级CoO和ZnO的混合物相比，在ZnO中以原子级引入Co作为代表TM的影响。尽管即使是非常简单的混合物也能提供比纯ZnO更高的容量，但由于Co的更均匀分散，纳米颗粒CoO和ZnO的紧密混合会导致进一步的增加。尽管如此，通过掺杂进行的“原子混合”仍然提供了最高的容量-因此，无论是纳米粒子还是微米粒子，都凸显了非常精细的Co分布（通常是TM）对于实现有效的电子传导途径以实现Li ₂ O的可逆形成的重要性。