## 1 Introduction  
At the current moment, both energy storage and transport remain hot topics in the materials research field. Social demand and environmental commitments focus the priorities on the development of future devices. Among other systems, lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) are still nowadays widely employed. Indeed, they have revolutionized human daily life concerning communications, technology, and entertainment [1]. Despite several safety concerns, the rapid technological development of wireless devices and hybrid vehicles in recent years has led to an increased demand for LIBs due to their high power and high energy density [2, 3, 4, 5]. Therefore, anode materials have had a growing body of research in the last few years, trying to replace the graphite anode with a new active material that offers higher cycling performance and good capacity retention [6]. The lithiation/de-lithiation process is pivotal for the research of new anode materials with regard to the charging rapidity [7]. The morphology of the nano-sized crystallites of different metal oxides offers new opportunities in materials engineering, due to their improved intrinsic properties. Thus, the reduction in particle size allows engineering the interfacial properties, which directly affect their application domain [8]. Ceria (CeO\({}_{2}\)) is an inexpensive and abundant material which has attracted much attention in recent years, as it presents excellent chemical and physical properties. Certainly, it is widely employed in numerous applied fields, such as, among others, catalysts [9, 10, 11], oxygen sensors [12, 13], fuel cells [14], biotechnology [15], and environmental chemistry [16]. These vast possible applications are due to the outstanding electronic properties of the fluorite-type CeO\({}_{2}\) material. Thus, the Ce oxidation state can change quickly between Ce\({}^{3+}\) and Ce\({}^{4+}\), which permits to stabilize oxygen vacancies without destructing the structure or modifying it through reversible processes. In addition, ceria can be prepared in numerous microstructured and nanostructured forms, leading to an enhancement of particular applications [17]. Indeed, ceria are used as a dopant to minimize the increase in the internal impedance of different metal-ion batteries, which occurs during discharge [18; 19], and it is also extensively studied as a component of the anodes in LIBs. Thus, hollow nanospheres of the CeO\({}_{2}\) material were prepared using anionic micelles [20] and led to good stability and capacity values of about 300 mA h g\({}^{-1}\) after 100 cycles at 0.2 A g\({}^{-1}\) current rate. The improved performance compared to dense ceria particles was interpreted considering that the hollow morphology favored the lithium insertion-deinsertion processes. Additionally, CeO\({}_{2}\) rhombus and shuttle-shaped microcrystals, obtained by a chemical precipitation method [21], displayed 315 mA h g\({}^{-1}\) after 50 cycles at 0.2 mA cm\({}^{-2}\) rate, although for further cycling, the capacity started to fade. Here also the improved response was attributed to small particle size and high concentration of oxygen vacancies. Additionally, other strategies searching the modification of the microstructure were approached. Thus, several doped ceria materials were prepared, e.g., FeO/Mn-rGO [22], displaying an average reversible capacity of over 420 mA h g\({}^{-1}\) after 50 cycles at a current of 0.1 C. Moreover, inorganic-organic hybrid composites with ceria nanoparticles on porous carbon were explored as anodes for LIBs, delivering 128 mA h g\({}^{-1}\) after 40 cycles at 0.1 A g\({}^{-1}\)[23]. The improvement of the electrochemical performance in the prepared anode was attributed to the stabilization of non-aggregated CeO\({}_{2}\) nanoparticles, which favored the electrochemical energy storage by accommodating the volume change of the anode during charge-discharge processes. On the other hand, the use of a 2D or 3D porous network can lead to significant enhancement in terms of electrochemical properties.