Effectively immobilizing nano-sized electrochemical active materials with a 3D porous framework constituted by conductive graphene sheets brings in enhanced lithium ion storage properties. Herein, a reduced graphene oxide (RGO) supported zinc ferrite (ZnFe2O4) composite anode material (ZnFe2O4/RGO) is fabricated by a simple and effective method. Firstly, redox reaction takes place between the oxygen-containing functional groups on few-layered graphene oxide (GO) sheets and controlled quantity of metallic Zn atoms. ZnO nanoparticles are in-situ nucleated and directly grow on GO sheets. Secondly, the GO sheets are completely reduced by abundant Fe atoms, and corresponding gamma-Fe2O3 nanoparticles are formed neighboring the ZnO nanoparticles. In this step, 3D porous RGO supporting framework are constructed with gamma-Fe2O3@ZnO nanoparticles effectively encapsulated between the RGO layers. Finally, the well-designed gamma-Fe2O3@ZnO/RGO intermediate product undergoes a thermal treatment to allow a solid-state reaction and obtains the ZnFe2O4/RGO composite. At a high current rate of 1.0 A.g(-1), the ZnFe2O4/RGO composite exhibits an inspiring reversible capacity of 1022 mAh.g(-1) for 500 consecutive cycles as anode material for lithium ion batteries. And the insight into the attractive lithium storage performance has been studied in this work. (C) 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.