Energy Storage Materials from Nature through Nanotechnology: A Sustainable Route from Reed Plants to a Silicon Anode for Lithium‐Ion Batteries

Abstract

Silicon is an attractive anode material in energy storage devices,asithas aten times higher theoretical capacity than its state-of-art carbonaceous counterpart. However,t he common process to synthesize silicon nanostructured electrodes is complex, costly,a nd energy-intensive.T hree-dimensional (3D) porous silicon-based anode materials have been fabricated from natural reed leaves by calcination and magnesiothermic reduction. This sustainable and highly abundant silica source allows for facile production of 3D porous silicon with very good electrochemical performance.T he obtained silicon anode retains the 3D hierarchical architecture of the reed leaf.I mpurity leaching and gas release during the fabrication process leads to an interconnected porosity and the reductive treatment to an inside carbon coating. Such anodes show ar emarkable Li-ion storage performance:e ven after 4000 cycles and at ar ate of 10 C, as pecific capacity of 420 mA hg À1 is achieved.

Si‐, Ge‐, Sn‐Based Anode Materials for Lithium‐Ion Batteries: From Structure Design to Electrochemical Performance

“…The fabrication of 3D porous M materials can be divided to two strategies, including top‐down and bottom‐up methods. Generally, the top‐down method employs bulk‐sized M‐based materials as the starting precursors to prepare 3D porous structures by electroless or electrochemical etching techniques . By controlling the etching processes, the obtained porous structures can be tuned to realize appropriate pore size and porosity.…”

“…After removing MgO by using an acid solution, the 3D porous‐Si materials can be prepared. Liu et al employed 3D porous SiO 2 converted from natural reed leaves as the precursors, fabricating one 3D highly porous Si⊂C hierarchical architecture via the magnesiothermic reduction and the carbon‐coating process. The reed leaves firstly went through a thermal treatment to get rid of their organic matter and forming a 3D porous SiO 2 skeleton.…”

“…C) Cycle performance of 3D highly porous Si⊂C anode materials. Reproduced with permission . Copyright 2015, Wiley‐VCH.…”

“…To improve the capacity of anode materials, considerable attention has been devoted to alloy‐type anode materials, owing to their high specific capacity and safety characteristics . Among various alloy‐type anode materials, those based on silicon (Si), germanium (Ge), and tin (Sn) show amazing capacities of 4200, 1625, and 994 mA h g −1 , respectively, holding great potential as anode materials for next‐generation LIBs . However, these anode materials undergo a huge volume variation during cycling, leading to poor electrochemical performance .…”

A Si/C nanocomposite anode by ball milling for highly reversible sodium storage

“…Silicon is a unique anode material for rechargeable energy-storage batteries, due to its high theoretical capacity (nearly ten times that of the state-of-the-art carbonaceous materials) [14][15][16][17][18][19][20].…”