One-Pot Synthesized Biomass C-Si Nanocomposites as an Anodic Material for High-Performance Sodium-Ion Battery

Abstract

Aiming at materializing an excellent anodic source material of the high-performance sodium-ion battery (SIB), we fabricated the biomass carbon-silicon (C-Si) nanocomposites by the one-pot synthesis of facile magnesiothermic reduction using brown rice husk ashes. The C-Si nanocomposites displayed an aggregated morphology, where the spherical Si nanoparticles (9 nm on average) and the C nanoflakes were encapsulated and decorated with each other. When utilizing the nanocomposites as an SIB anode, a high initial discharge capacity (i.e., 378 mAh/g at 100 mA/g) and a high reversible capacity (i.e., 122 mAh/g at 200 mA/g) were achieved owing to their enhanced electronic and ionic conductivities. Moreover, the SIB device exhibited a high cyclic stability in its Coulombic efficiency (i.e., 98% after 100 charge-discharge cycles at 200 mA/g). These outstanding results depict that the one-pot synthesized biomass C-Si nanocomposites are beneficial for future green energy-storage technology.

Excellent Electrocatalytic Hydrogen Evolution Reaction Performances of Partially Graphitized Activated-Carbon Nanobundles Derived from Biomass Human Hair Wastes

“…Both HH-AC-600 and HH-AC-700 samples display three predominant Raman bands at 2848 cm −1 (2D band), 1601 cm −1 (G band), and 1345 cm −1 (D band) ( Figure 4 b). The 2D band is indicative of the distinctive signature from the activated carbon; and the G and the D bands are attributed to the E 2g vibration mode of the sp 2 hybridized carbon and the disorder vibration mode of graphitic carbon, respectively [ 34 , 35 , 36 ]. According to previous reports [ 29 ], the I D /I G ratio represents the degree of graphitization for the layered carbonaceous materials.…”

Derivation of Luminescent Mesoporous Silicon Nanocrystals from Biomass Rice Husks by Facile Magnesiothermic Reduction

“…As shown in Figure 3 a, all of the three samples exhibited the typical diffraction patterns of crystalline Si at 28.4°, 47.4°, 56.1°, 69.1°, 76.4°, and 88.2°, which correspond to the (111), (220), (311), (400), (331), and (422) Si planes (JCPDS No. 27-1402 [ 18 , 33 , 52 , 53 ]), respectively. This means that all three, S-Si, R-Si, and B-Si, were well crystallized via magnesiothermic reduction from the biomass resources of the S-RH, R-RH, and B-RH ashes, respectively.…”

“…As shown in Figure 3 b, the Raman spectra of all three samples revealed a similar feature of the typical Raman vibration modes from crystalline Si. Namely, the sharp peak at 519 cm −1 (i.e., the first-order transversal optical (TO) mode [ 18 , 57 , 58 ]) and the broad hump at 957 cm −1 (i.e., the second-order TO mode [ 18 , 57 , 58 ]) are clearly observable in all the samples, while no other Raman bands are visible. This demonstrates that the high-purity Si nanocrystals were effectively derived from the biomass RHs through the magnesiothermic reduction process.…”

“…Owing to the high porosity of Si nanocrystals, furthermore, they are also very useful as an active source material in energy storage and conversion devices. For example, Si nanocrystals could be used as an effective catalyst for the hydrogen evolution reaction [ 17 ], and be utilized as an anodic source material for highly energy-efficient lithium-ion and sodium-ion batteries [ 18 , 19 , 20 ].…”

“…Accordingly, various biomass resources (e.g., sugarcane bagasse [ 29 ], bamboo leaves [ 29 , 30 ], beach sand [ 31 ], corn leaves [ 32 ], and rice husks (RHs) [ 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 , 37 ]) were used in earlier studies for the derivation of high-quality Si nanocrystals (also see Table S2 for the comparison of Si production from various biomass resources by using several experimental techniques, Supplementary Materials ). Among them, RHs are one of the most prominent siliceous precursors because of their huge availability and high silica contents [ 18 , 38 , 39 ]. These provide us with a good hint to produce a large amount of Si nanocrystals via the recycling of biomass RHs.…”