Abstract
Although the silicon oxide (SiO2) as an anode material shows potential and promise for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), owing to its high capacity, low cost, abundance, and safety, severe capacity decay and sluggish charge transfer during the discharge–charge process has caused a serious challenge for available applications. Herein, a novel 3D porous silicon oxide@Pourous Carbon@Tin (SiO2@Pc@Sn) composite anode material was firstly designed and synthesized by freeze-drying and thermal-melting self-assembly, in which SiO2 microparticles were encapsulated in the porous carbon as well as Sn nanoballs being uniformly dispersed in the SiO2@Pc-like sesame seeds, effectively constructing a robust and conductive 3D porous Jujube cake-like architecture that is beneficial for fast ion transfer and high structural stability. Such a SiO2@Pc@Sn micro-nano hierarchical structure as a LIBs anode exhibits a large reversible specific capacity ~520 mAh·g−1, initial coulombic efficiency (ICE) ~52%, outstanding rate capability, and excellent cycling stability over 100 cycles. Furthermore, the phase evolution and underlying electrochemical mechanism during the charge–discharge process were further uncovered by cyclic voltammetry (CV) investigation.
Highlights
Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) anode exhibits a large reversible specific capacity ~520 mAh·g−1, initial coulombic efficiency (ICE) ~52%, outstanding rate capability, and excellent cycling stability over 100 cycles
Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) have been regarded as one of the critical energy storage technologies that can be widely used in portable electronics and grid-scale energy storage due to their high energy density and cycle longevity to make a fossil fuel-free environment possible [1,2,3,4,5]
With the advent of electric vehicles (EV) in recent years, the traditional commercialized LIBs are obviously insufficient to meet the requirement owning to their limited capacities
Summary
Diatomite (325 mesh, Sinopharm Chemical Reagent Co., Ltd. Shanghai, China) was ground for 10 h by a high-energy ball mill, the sample was dispersed in the glucose aqueous solution by ultrasonic for 15 mi. The freeze-drying process for 60 h was carried out, in which the mass ratio of SiO2 to glucose was 1:1 (w/w). The freeze-drying samples were transferred to a tube furnace and carbonized for 3 h at 500 ◦ C in an Ar/H2 gas environment to obtain SiO2 @Pc composites. The previously obtained SiO2 @Pc from the above step was weighed at ratio of 1:1. (w/w) with Sn powders (325 mesh, Sinopharm Chemical ReagentCo., Ltd. Shanghai, China) and mixed fully. The mixture was transferred to a tubular furnace (OTF1200X), and heated at a rate of 5 ◦ C/min to 300 ◦ C, keeping for 1 h in an Ar/H2 protect gas. The sample of SiO2 @Pc@Sn was obtained via rapid cooling
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