Intercalated SiO2&Si/Carbon Composite for High Capacity Li Ion Battery Anodes

In this work, an effective approach to engineer Si and crystal SiO2 nanoparticles with carbon for high performance electrochemical energy storage was presented. We designed an intercalated carbon mixed SiO2&Si nanoparticles/carbon multilayer structure on the Cu current collector for an electrochemically stable and high energy density Si based electrode and carried out by alternately depositing C and SiO2&Si by plasma decomposition of CH4 and SiH4. This design allows for increasing mass loading per geometric area and improving the energy density. The structure and chemical composition of the composites were characterized by SEM, TEM, XRD, XPS, etc. The electrode with 12 layers exhibited an excellent cycling retention and a reversible areal capacity of ∼ 0.46 mAh/cm2 at a current rate of 52 μA/cm2, which is much higher than most of previously reported values of various other materials. The versatile approach for fabricate the intercalated SiO2&Si/carbon films electrodes presented in this work can be extended to a variety of energy conversion and storage applications.