Lithium ion batteries (LIB) are one of the most commercially significant secondary batteries, but in order to continue improving the devices that rely on this form of energy storage, it is necessary to optimize their components. One common problem with anode materials that hinders their performance is volumetric expansion during cycling. One of the methods studied to resolve this issue is the confinement of metal oxides with the interest of improving the longevity of their performance with cycling. Confinement of metal oxide nanoparticles within carbon nanotubes has shown to improve the performance of these anode materials versus unconfined metal oxides. Here, electrostatic spray deposition (ESD) is used to create thin films of nano-confined tin oxide/CNT composite as the active anode material for subsequent property testing of assembled LIBs. This thesis gives the details of the techniques used to produce the desired anode materials and their electrochemical characterization as LIB anodes.
