title: Simulation of the Impact of Si Shell Thickness on the Performance of Si-Coated Vertically Aligned Carbon Nanofiber as Li-Ion Battery Anode.
abstract: Micro- and nano-structured electrodes have the potential to improve the performance of Li-ion batteries by increasing the surface area of the electrode and reducing the diffusion distance required by the charged carriers. We report the numerical simulation of Lithium-ion batteries with the anode made of core-shell heterostructures of silicon-coated carbon nanofibers. We show that the energy capacity can be significantly improved by reducing the thickness of the silicon anode to the dimension comparable or less than the Li-ion diffusion length inside silicon. The results of simulation indicate that the contraction of the silicon electrode thickness during the battery discharge process commonly found in experiments also plays a major role in the increase of the energy capacity.
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, The University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045, USA. susobhan@ku.edu.
authors.forename: Susobhan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Das
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS 66506-0401, USA. junli@ksu.edu.
authors.forename: Jun
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, The University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045, USA. rhui@ku.edu.
authors.forename: Rongqing
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Hui
keywords: Li-ion batteries; battery performance; carbon nanowires; nanostructures; numerical simulations; silicon anode