(644b) Engineered Silicon Graphene Oxide Anodes for Lithium Ion Batteries

Advances in technologies for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) have been so spectacular in recent years that they have become one of the most popular sources for portable computing and telecommunication equipment. In the last five years there has been a lot of work on the electrochemical properties of electrode Materials for Lithium Ion Batteries (LIBs) using Graphene (G) and Graphene Oxide (GO) with silicon, however, these works suffer from several drawbacks associated with the breakage of the silicon layer. We present a new technology that avoids breakage of the silicon layer at the SEI interface and characterize these new materials. We incorporate silicon as the high capacity electrochemically active material which has the potential to greatly increase the capacity of these materials. We synthesized anodes using reduced graphene oxide as the matrix material for silicon nanoparticles. These composites are thermally reduced to convert GO to a graphitic structure capable of providing high electrical conductivity as well as high lithium ion conductivity. We solidify the composite to effectively trap the electrochemically active silicon nanoparticles within the matrix, preventing segregation of the active components from the conductive matrix. We present the results of both thermally reduced and chemically reduced graphene oxide based anodes. Our results show anodes cycled at very high charge and discharge rates of 3A/g are possible. We vary the percent of silicon inside the graphene oxide structures, and we report capacities starting at 2000 mA-hr/g.