Issue 47, 2018

Fabrication and understanding of Cu3Si-Si@carbon@graphene nanocomposites as high-performance anodes for lithium-ion batteries

Abstract

Besides silicon's low electronic conductivity, another critical issue for using silicon as the anode for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) is the dramatic volume variation (>300%) during lithiation/delithiation processes, which can lead to rapid capacity fading and poor rate capability, thereby hampering silicon's practical applications in batteries. To mitigate these issues, herein, we report our findings on the design and understanding of a self-supported Cu3Si-Si@carbon@graphene (Cu3Si-SCG) nanocomposite anode. The nanocomposite is composed of Cu3Si-Si core and carbon shell with core/shell particles uniformly encapsulated by graphene nanosheets anchored directly on a Cu foil. In this design, the carbon shell, the highly elastic graphene nanosheet, and the formed conductive and inactive Cu3Si phase in Si serve as buffer media to suppress volume variation of Si during lithiation/delithiation processes and to facilitate the formation of a stable solid electrolyte interface (SEI) layer as well as to enable good transport kinetics. Chemomechanical simulation results quantitatively coincide with the in situ TEM observations of volume expansion and provide process details not seen in experiments. The optimized Cu3Si-SCG nanocomposite anode exhibits good rate performance and delivers reversible capacity of 483 mA h gāˆ’1 (based on the total weight of Cu3Si-SCG) after 500 cycles with capacity retention of about 80% at high current density of 4 A gāˆ’1, rendering the nanocomposite a desirable anode candidate for high-performance LIBs.

Graphical abstract: Fabrication and understanding of Cu3Si-Si@carbon@graphene nanocomposites as high-performance anodes for lithium-ion batteries

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
05 Sep 2018
Accepted
19 Sep 2018
First published
20 Sep 2018

Nanoscale, 2018,10, 22203-22214

Fabrication and understanding of Cu3Si-Si@carbon@graphene nanocomposites as high-performance anodes for lithium-ion batteries

Z. Zheng, H. Wu, H. Chen, Y. Cheng, Q. Zhang, Q. Xie, L. Wang, K. Zhang, M. Wang, D. Peng and X. C. Zeng, Nanoscale, 2018, 10, 22203 DOI: 10.1039/C8NR07207H

To request permission to reproduce material from this article, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements