Tin monoxide is a kind of IV-VI metal monoxides that has attracted great deal of attention due to its wide optical band gap and high field effect mobility in the past decade. On the other hand, nanoshell is a unique porous structure. Its curved shell provides a shelter for the hollow core, as well as a much bigger special surface area. We in this study systematically prepared SnO nanoshells through a facile self-assembly method under different annealing conditions. The lithium ion batteries were fabricated immediately based on the as prepared nanoshells. The capacity of as fabricated lithium ion batteries was 559.3 mAhg at rate performance of 0.1 Ag and 497.5 mAhg at 1 Ag in 30th cycle. This work exhibited high application performance of SnO nanoshells. We hope this work will help study similar structure and applications of IV-VI metal monoxides.