Investigation of Peptization Technique to Synthesize Si@TiO₂ for a Li-Ion Battery Anode Material

Abstract

Electric vehicles (EVs) have a significant advantage in terms of energy efficiency and environmental friendliness. In lithium-ion batteries, silicon is seeking more attention than graphite-based anodes due to its high storage capacity. However, it faces severe structural degradation due to volume expansion which is responsible for fast capacity degradation. In the present study, the core shell is developed with the core as silicon and titania as shell (Si@TiO2) and utilized it as an anode in the 2016-coin cell. The material characterization (FE-SEM, TEM, EDS, XRD and XPS) of this developed core-shell material is recorded to confirm its elemental composition and structural validation. The electrochemical performance is measured using cyclic voltammetry (CV) and galvanostatic charge/discharge (GCD) test. Cyclic voltammetry profiles reveal the stable lithiation and delithiation process. Initial specific capacity of ≈3180 mAh/g is reported, capacity retention of 61% for the developed core-shell while 34% for the bare silicon is noted over 100 cycles. The proposed method (peptization technique) for the development of core-shell nanoparticles is also compared with the sol-gel approach. The result shows an increment of 5% in capacity retention after 100 cycles by following the peptization technique.