Electrochemical performance of Li-ion battery-based porous silicon nanowires (PSiNWs) decorated with silver nanoparticles

Abstract

ABSTRACT In recent years, silicon-based materials have attracted great interest for their use as anode in lithium-ion batteries due to their low charging potential and high specific capacity. Morever, silicon nanowires (SiNWs) have been shown to successfully solve the volume-expansion problem by providing free volumes to accommodate silicon expansion. In this work, we fabricated porous silicon nanowires (PSiNWs) on an n-type silicon wafer using a single low-cost metal-assisted chemical etching (MACE) step. Then, the formed (PSiNWs) nanowires were extracted and covered with silver nanoparticles. To reveal the underlying physical and electrochemical mechanisms, we also process a sample of comparative porous silicon nanowires, ranging in diameter from 50 to 100 nm and having a porosity of approximately 60%. The specific capacity is approximately 3635 mA h g−1 with a Coulomb efficiency of 98.8% in the first charge/discharge cycle for PSiNWs/AgNPs, while PSiNWs exhibit low capacity during the first cycle. This study highlights the design of porous silicon nanowires with a large specific surface area and the structural modification of the surface with silver nanoparticles.