Building 3D porous, elastic and hydrophilic current collectors: Prolonging the cycling life of Si based anode for lithium ion batteries

Huge volume variation plagued silicon for large-scale application in high energy density lithium ion batteries serving as anodic materials, making active layers cracked or delaminated from current collectors after several cycles. To address this issue, a free-standing 3D porous carbon based current collector with recoverable mechanical robustness is dedicatedly designed and fabricated. Atmospheric pressure Ar plasma jet irradiation is applied to transit its surface wettability from hydrophobic to hydrophilic, making it compatible with the aqueous slurry casting process. Embedding Si nanoparticles without any architecture modification into such a state-of-the-art current collector delivers an excellent reversible capacity (1138 mAh g−1), prolonged cycling performance (>400 cycles) at the current density of 0.5 A g−1 and low capacity fading rate (<0.09% per cycle). This also provides considerable opportunities as a current collector of choice for the energy storage units in the ever-growing flexible and wearable electronic devices.