High-Performance Porous Silicon/Nanosilver Anodes from Industrial Low-Grade Silicon for Lithium-Ion Batteries

Silicon (Si) has been considered as one of the most promising candidates for the next-generation lithium-ion battery (LIB) anode materials owing to its huge theoretical specific capacity of 4200 mA h g^-1. However, the practical application of Si anodes in commercial LIBs is facing challenges because of the lack of scalable and cost-effective methods to prepare Si-based anode materials with proper microstructure and competitive electrochemical performances. Herein, we report a facile and scalable method to produce multidimensional porous silicon embedded with a nanosilver particle (pSi/Ag) composite from commercially available low-cost metallurgical-grade silicon (MG-Si) powder. The unique hybrid structure contributes to fast electronic transport and relieves volume change of silicon during the charge-discharge process. The pSi/Ag composite exhibits a large initial discharge capacity (3095 mA h g^-1 at a high current of 1 A g^-1), an excellent cycling performance (1930 mA h g^-1 at 1 A g^-1 after 50 cycles), and outstanding rate capacities (up to 1778 mA h g^-1 at a higher current of 2 A g^-1). After the samples are modified by reduced graphene oxide, the capacities of the pSi/Ag@RGO composite electrode can still be maintained over 1000 mA h g^-1 after 200 cycles. This study provides a simple and effective strategy for production of high-performance anode materials.