Nano-sized silicon oxide electrode for the next generation lithium ion batteries

Lithium-ion battery testing Copyright : Argonne National Laboratory / Flickr

The lithium ion battery market has been growing steadily and has been seeking an approach to increase battery capacity while retaining its capacity for long recharging process.

Structuring materials for electrode at the nanometre-length scale has been known to be an effective way to meet this demand; however, such nanomaterials would essentially need to be produced by high throughput processing in order to transfer these technologies to industry.

This article published in the Science and Technology of Advanced Materials reports an approach which potentially has an industrially compatible high throughputs to produce nano-sized composite silicon-based powders as a strong candidate for the negative electrode of the next generation high density lithium ion batteries.

The authors have successfully produced nanocomposite SiO powders by plasma spray physical vapor deposition [1] using low cost metallurgical grade powders at high throughputs. Using this method, they demonstrated an explicit improvement in the battery capacity cycle performance with these powders as electrode.

The uniqueness of this processing method is that nanosized SiO composites are produced instantaneously through the evaporation and subsequent co-condensation of the powder feedstock. The approach is called plasma spray physical vapor deposition (PS-PVD). 

The composites are 20 nm particles, which are composed of a crystalline Si core and SiOx shell. Furthermore, the addition of methane (CH4) promotes the reduction of SiO and results in the decreased SiO-shell thickness.  The core-shell structure is formed in a single-step continuous processing.

As a result, the irreversible capacity was effectively decreased, and half-cell batteries made of PS-PVD powders have exhibited improved initial efficiency and maintenance of capacity as high as 1000 mAhg−1 after 100 cycles at the same time.

Reference:
Keiichiro Homma, Makoto Kambara, Toyonobu Yoshida: Sci. Technol. Adv. Mater. 15 (2014) 025006. http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1468-6996/15/2/025006

[1] See, for instance, figures 1 and 3., J. Appl. Phys. 115, 143302 (2014); doi: 10.1063/1.4870600

For more information, contact
Dr. Makoto Kambara
Dept. Materials Engineering
The University of Tokyo
Email: mkambara@plasma.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp

Associated links

Media Contact

Mikiko Tanifuji Research SEA News

All latest news from the category: Materials Sciences

Materials management deals with the research, development, manufacturing and processing of raw and industrial materials. Key aspects here are biological and medical issues, which play an increasingly important role in this field.

innovations-report offers in-depth articles related to the development and application of materials and the structure and properties of new materials.

Back to home

Comments (0)

Write a comment

Newest articles

Memory Self-Test via Smartphone

… Can Identify Early Signs of Alzheimer’s disease. Dedicated memory tests on smartphones enable the detection of “mild cognitive impairment”, a condition that may indicate Alzheimer’s disease, with high accuracy….

The Sound of the Perfect Coating

Fraunhofer IWS Transfers Laser-based Sound Analysis of Surfaces into Industrial Practice with “LAwave”. Sound waves can reveal surface properties. Parameters such as surface or coating quality of components can be…

Customized silicon chips

…from Saxony for material characterization of printed electronics. How efficient are new materials? Does changing the properties lead to better conductivity? The Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems IPMS develops and…

Partners & Sponsors