Nano-Silicon Containing Composite Graphitic Anodes with Improved Cycling Stability for Application in High Energy Lithium-Ion Batteries

The development of affordable and safe lithium-ion batteries (LIB) which feature high storage capacity represents one of the priority strategies toward further introduction of green technologies in our everyday life. This paper presents a study into the candidate composite anodes for high energy LIB; these utilize reversible high storage capacity of ions of lithium in the form of alloys of the latter with nano-sized silicon, imbedded in a soft-carbon matrix, which in turn, are deposited on a robust graphitic core. These structures allow an efficient contact between the constituents to be realized at the same time providing space for Si nano-particles during lithiation/de-lithiation process. The synthetic route described herein has a high potential for a cost-effective scale-up with the battery materials industry. Presented results demonstrate feasibility for creation of new active materials for the negative electrodes in LIB, which feature the storage capacity up to 700 mAh g−1 at C/2 and in excess of 1450 mAh g−1 at C/20 cycling rates, respectively. This work also shows that the use of acrylic binder has a positive effect on the overall system performance, as compared to state-of-the-art PVDF-based binder systems.