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Graphene-encapsulated blackberry-like porous silicon nanospheres prepared by modest magnesiothermic reduction for high-performance lithium-ion battery anode

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Abstract

Porous silicon (Si) nanostructures have aroused much interest as lithium-ion battery anodes because of the large space to accommodate the volume change in lithiation and delithiation and shorter ion transfer distance. However, fabrication of porous structures tends to be difficult to control and complex, so, the final electrochemical performance can be compromised. Herein, a modest magnesiothermic reduction (MMR) reaction is demonstrated to produce blackberry-like porous Si nanospheres (PSSs) controllably using magnesium silicide (Mg2Si) as Mg source and SiO2 nanospheres as the reactant. This improved MR method provides good control of the kinetics and heat release compared to the traditional MR (TMR) method using Mg powder as the reactant. The PSSs obtained by MMR reaction has higher structural integrity than that fabricated by TMR. After encapsulation with reduced graphene oxide, the Si/C composite exhibits superior cycling stability and rates such as a high reversible capacity of 1034 mAh·g−1 at 0.5C (4200 mAh·g−1 at 1.0C) after 1000 cycles, capacity retention of 79.5%, and high rate capacity of 497 mAh·g−1 at 2.0C. This strategy offers a new route to fabricate high-performance porous Si anodes and can be extended to other materials such as germanium.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 51974208 and 51504171), the Major Project of Technology Innovation of Hubei Province (No. 2018AAA011), the Special Project of Central Government for Local Science and Technology Development of Hubei Province (No. 2019ZYYD024), the Innovation Group of Natural Science Foundation of Hubei Province (No. 2019CFA020), Wuhan Yellow Crane Talents Program, City University of Hong Kong Applied Research Grant (ARG) (No. 9667122) and Hong Kong Research Grants Council (RGC) General Research Funds (GRF) (No. City U 11205617).

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  1. Ben Xiang and Wei-Li An have contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. The State Key Laboratory of Refractories and Metallurgy, Institute of Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology, Wuhan University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430081, China

    Ben Xiang, Ji-Jiang Fu, Shi-Xiong Mei, Si-Guang Guo, Xu-Ming Zhang & Biao Gao

  2. BTR New Material Group Co., Ltd., Shenzhen, 518106, China

    Wei-Li An

  3. Department of Physics, City University of Hong Kong, Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon, 999077, Hong Kong, China

    Biao Gao & Paul K. Chu

  4. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon, 999077, Hong Kong, China

    Paul K. Chu

  5. Department of Biomedical Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon, 999077, Hong Kong, China

    Paul K. Chu

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  1. Ben Xiang
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Xiang, B., An, WL., Fu, JJ. et al. Graphene-encapsulated blackberry-like porous silicon nanospheres prepared by modest magnesiothermic reduction for high-performance lithium-ion battery anode. Rare Met. 40, 383–392 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12598-020-01528-9

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