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. (C) 2013 The Electrochemical Society. All rights reserved.