Silicon and Graphene Combo Finally Achieve Lithium-Ion Battery Greatness

Silicon, graphene, and sometimes the two of them combined together have all been suggested as potential replacements for graphite in the electrodes of lithium-ion batteries.

While all three of these options bring attractive properties to the table—most importantly, a very high theoretical capacity—those properties are lost in the real world. Silicon electrodes crack and break after just a short number of charge/discharge cycles. Meanwhile, the use of graphene on electrodes is limited because graphene’s attractive surface area is only possible in single stand-alone sheets, which don’t provide enough volumetric capacitance. Layer the graphene sheets on top of each other to gain that volumetric capacity, and you begin to lose that attractive surface area.

Now researchers at Kansas State University (KSU) claim to have developed a technique that uses silicon oxycarbide that makes the combination of silicon and graphene achieve its expected greatness as an electrode material