Nanostructured Silicon as a High Capacity Anode in Energy Storage Devices

Background

The global market for lithium ion batteries has grown significantly in the past 10 years and is expected to continue to grow at a rate of up to 15% per year for at least the next seven years. The UK government pledge to phase out new petrol and diesel cars by 2030 will undoubtedly lead to higher production volumes of electric cars and therefore the battery technology with which to power them. However, the current batteries can only take a car about 400 km after a single charging, which is substantially less than the range of conventional cars. If a battery’s energy density could be doubled, the driving range would be doubled.

Research into replacing the traditionally used graphite for silicon as an anode material for Li-Ion batteries (LIBs) has become increasingly prominent over the years. Silicon has an exceptionally high capacity for lithium, however, silicon expansion and contraction often leads to anode cracking thus giving anode a very short lifetime.

Technology Overview

Researchers at the University of East Anglia have developed silicon based nanoparticles which can be compacted together and increase the anode lifetime towards commercial application levels, with a real capacity of almost twice graphite.

The nanostructured silicon generated retains the large capacity for lithium. Importantly, the structure of the anode does not have the negative implications associated when using silicon previously. This technology has been validated under test conditions in the lab. This alternative anode material developed is a big step forward for materials in energy storage devices.

The work up to now was done with the aim to synthesise enough material for electrochemical measurements in order to establish the products viability to successfully replace graphite as the commercially used anode material for lithium ion batteries

Further Details:

1. Enabling the ability of Li storage at high rate as anodes by utilizing natural rice husks- based hierarchically porous SiO2/N-doped carbon composites Yi Feng; Li Liu; Xiaoyang Liu; Yifei Teng; Yixin Li; Yutong Guo; Yanchao Zhu; Xiaofeng Wang; Yimin Chao , Electrochimica Acta, 359, 136933 (2020)
2. Extracting Lignin-SiO2 Composites from Si-Rich Biomass to Prepare Si/C Anode Materials for Lithium ions Batteries, Yixin Li; Li Liu; Xiaoyang Liu; Yi Feng; Beichen Xue; Liyun Yu; Lijie Ma; Yanchao Zhu; Yimin Chao; Xiaofeng Wang, Materials Chemistry and Physics, accepted.

Benefits

• Nanostructured silicon material with larger capacity for Lithium than current graphite anode
• Excellent for energy storage devices which are needed for electric vehicles
• Silicon and lithium are in abundance therefore they are excellent together as batteries

Applications

• Energy storage devices in electric vehicles
• Grid-scale energy storage
• Electronic devices

Opportunity

Seeking industry collaborators and licensees for further development and commercialisation of the materials and IP.