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Optimized ALD-derived MgO coating layers enhancing silicon anode performance for lithium ion batteries

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Abstract

In this work, atomic layer deposition (ALD), as a novel strategy, has been applied to deposit MgO on nano-sized porous Si (pSi) dendrites obtained by etching Al–Si alloy for LIBs. The reversible specific capacity of pSi@MgO electrode is 969.4 mA h/g after 100 cycles at 100 mA/g between 0.01 and 1.5 V, and it presents the discharge specific capacities of 1253.0, 885.5, 642.4, 366.2, and 101.4 mA h/g at 100, 500, 1000, 2000, and 5000 mA/g, respectively. What is more, it delivers a high reversible capacity of 765.1 mA h/g even at 500 mA/g after 200 cycles. The performance improvement can be attributed to the protection of the MgO layer and built-in space of porous Si for volume expansion upon cycling. These results illustrate that ALD derived coating is a powerful strategy to enhance electrical properties of anode materials with huge volume change for lithium-ion batteries.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51572194 and 51672189), the Key Projects of Tianjin Municipal Natural Science Foundation of China (14JCZDJC32200), and Tianjin Science and Technology Project (18PTZWHZ00020).

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Tai, X., Li, X., Kakimov, A. et al. Optimized ALD-derived MgO coating layers enhancing silicon anode performance for lithium ion batteries. Journal of Materials Research 34, 2425–2434 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1557/jmr.2019.150

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