HCS (Hollow carbon spheres) covered with metal oxide nanoparticles (SnO2 and MnO2, respectively) were successfully synthesized and investigated regarding their potential as anode materials for lithium ion batteries. Raman spectroscopy shows a high degree of graphitization for the HCS host structure. The mesoporous nature of the nanocomposites is confirmed by Brunauer Emmett Teller analysis. For both metal oxides under study, the metal oxide functionalization of HCS yields a significant increase of electrochemical performance. The charge capacity of HCS/SnO2 is 370 mA hg(-1) after 45 cycles (266 mA hg(-1) in HCS/MnO2) which clearly exceeds the value of 188 mA hg(-1) in pristine HCS. Remarkably, the data imply excellent long term cycling stability after 100 cycles in both cases. The results hence show that mesoporous HCS/metal oxide nanocomposites enable exploiting the potential of metal oxide anode materials in Lithium-ion batteries by providing a HCS host structure which is both conductive and stable enough to accommodate big volume change effects. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.