Study of Silicon Composite for Negative Electrode of Lithium-Ion Battery

Using of layered silicon-based composites instead of thick-film silicon electrodes is an effective way for improvement of their cycling stability. In the present work, the transformation of electrode with layered Si-O-Al composite at cycling is studied. Fresh prepared electrodes have columnar morphology with average pillars' diameter of 50 nm and inter-pillar distance 1-2 nm. After 100 cycles, the columnar morphology remains as a whole, but total thickness of layered composites increases by 7-10-fold. This phenomenon is likely to be caused by both structure changes and SEI formation.