Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) are an integral part of consumer electronic devices and electric vehicles. There is a growing need for LIBs with higher capacity, rate performance and cycling stability. At the anode electrode these challenges are being addressed for instance by utilising materials with higher theoretical capacity compared to graphite (372 mAh/g) or by optimising the morphology of materials through nanostructuring of the electrode. In this thesis the former is investigated by synthesising a reduced graphene oxide (rGO) tin sulphide (SnS2) hybrid, and the latter by self-assembly of rGO sodium titanate and rGO titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanorods.

In Chapter 2, SnS2 is investigated due to its high theoretical capacity as an anode material (645 mAh/g), low cost and environmental benignity. SnS2 nanoparticles were grown directly on rGO sheets which provide a conductive framework and limit the detachment of tin particles which undergo large volume changes during alloying reactions. However, a fast decrease in capacity was observed. Post-mortem analysis of the electrodes showed that rGO becomes irreversibly passivated suggesting that additional measures to retain effective charge transport between the low weight percent conductive additive and the active phase during cycling are required.

An alternative material system based on nanorods of intercalation materials (sodium titanate and TiO2) wrapped by rGO sheets was chosen to investigate self-assembly in anodes to address the low packing density of nanomaterials. A drop-casting method was used to align rGO-sodium titanate nanorods through evaporation driven self-assembly (Chapter 3) which relies on a combination of electrostatic repulsive forces originating from the rGO coating, and liquid crystal phase formation at high concentrations, facilitated by the high aspect ratio nanorods. As reference, non-aligned films were prepared by adjusting the pH of the nanorod dispersion.

Freestanding aligned and non-aligned films were converted to rGO-TiO2 (Chapter 4). The volumetric capacity of the self-assembled films was double that of non-aligned films, and up to 4.5 times higher than traditional casted electrodes using the same material. Further, up to rates of 4 C, the self-assembled films outperformed the non-aligned films. These films showed no sign of capacity fading up to 1000 cycles, which together with post-mortem analysis confirms that these assembled structures are maintained during battery cycling.