title: Chamber-confined silicon-carbon nanofiber composites for prolonged cycling life of Li-ion batteries.
abstract: Silicon is a promising high capacity (4200 mA h g(-1)) anode material for lithium ion batteries but the significant volume change (over 300%) of silicon during lithiation/delithiation remains a challenge in terms of silicon pulverization and solid-electrolyte-interphase (SEI) accumulation in the silicon composite electrode. To alleviate the volumetric change of silicon, we built a flexible and self-supporting carbon-enhanced carbon nanofiber (CNF) structure with vacant chamber to encapsulate Si nanoparticles (vacant Si@CNF@C). This composite was tested directly without any polymer and current collector. The confined vacant chamber allowed the increasing volume of silicon and SEI accumulates to be well retained for a long cycle life. This chamber-confined silicon-carbon nanofiber composite exhibited an improved performance in terms of good cycling performance (620 mA h g(-1)), high coulombic efficiency (99%), and good capacity retention (80%) after 200 cycles. This self-supported silicon-carbon nanofiber structure showed high flexibility and good electrochemical performance for the potential as flexible electrode for lithium-ion batteries.
authors.affiliation: Fiber and Polymer Science Program, Department of Textile Engineering, Chemistry and Science, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695-8301, USA. xiangwu_zhang@ncsu.edu.
authors.forename: Kun
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Fu
authors.forename: Yao
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Lu
authors.forename: Mahmut
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Dirican
authors.forename: Chen
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Meltem
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Yanilmaz
authors.forename: Quan
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Shi
authors.forename: Philip D
authors.initials: PD
authors.lastname: Bradford
authors.forename: Xiangwu
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhang