Facile Synthesis of Porous Silicon Nanofibers by Magnesium Reduction for Application in Lithium Ion Batteries

• Main Authors: Cho, Daehwan (Author), Kim, Moonkyoung (Author), Hwang, Jeonghyun (Author), Park, Jay Hoon (Contributor), Joo, Yong Lak (Author), Jeong, Youngjin (Author)
• Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Chemical Engineering (Contributor)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Biomed Central Ltd., 2015-12-30T19:32:03Z.
• Subjects: Article
• Online Access: Get fulltext

We report a facile fabrication of porous silicon nanofibers by a simple three-stage procedure. Polymer/silicon precursor composite nanofibers are first fabricated by electrospinning, a water-based spinning dope, which undergoes subsequent heat treatment and then reduction using magnesium to be converted into porous silicon nanofibers. The porous silicon nanofibers are coated with a graphene by using a plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition for use as an anode material of lithium ion batteries. The porous silicon nanofibers can be mass-produced by a simple and solvent-free method, which uses an environmental-friendly polymer solution. The graphene-coated silicon nanofibers show an improved cycling performance of a capacity retention than the pure silicon nanofibers due to the suppression of the volume change and the increase of electric conductivity by the graphene.
Korea Institute of Energy Technology Evaluation and Planning (Human Resources Development Program Grant 20144030200600)