In this article, we report a novel Si-Metal silicides/Carbon composite anode material for lithium-ion rechargeable batteries. The composite powder comprised of Si, FeSi 2 and CrSi 2 were synthesized by high-energy mechanical milling and then a primary carbon was formed over the Si-silicide at 900 • C. The prepared composite powder was agglomerated and subsequently a thin carbon layer was coated. The X-ray diffraction results revealed that the Si and silicide crystal size decrease with respect to milling time. The critical milling time to achieve the completely nano-scale powders was 5 h. The composite powder exhibits randomly distributed carbon-coated Si-silicide. The TEM microstructure revealed homogeneous distribution of nanocomposite powder consists a very fine nanoparticles of the order of ∼30 nm. The prepared Si-silicide/C composite powders exhibited good capacity retention with an average coulombic efficiency of 99.6%. The composite powders showed good cyclability, 1076 mAh g −1 at 50 th cycle and 959 mAh g −1 at 100 th cycle. The electrode internal microstructure revealed a shell-like carbon-coated Si-silicide phases, and a complete amorphization of nanocrystalline Si during the initial cycling, while the inactive silicide phase remains unchanged. Consequently, the size reduction of Si-silicide and carbon coating over it greatly enhanced the cycling performance of the electrode.

The SiO2 generated by low-temperature oxidation of ultra-thin metallic silicon (thickness = 50 nm) film was evaluated for implementation in one-glass-solution capacitive touch-screen panels (OGS-TSPs) on sapphire-based substrates. Our results show that the silicon films oxidized at 823 K exhibited the highest visible transmittance about 91% at 550 nm, compared to ~72% transmittance of the as-deposited silicon films which were deposited at room temperature. Additionally, the annealed films exhibited a more uniform, dense, and smooth surface microstructure than that of the as-deposited Si films. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) results revealed that the low-temperature oxidation of Si films at 823 K yielded SiO2. Furthermore, when the insulating SiO2 film obtained by low-temperature oxidation was sandwiched between two indium tin oxide (ITO) layers (ITO/SiO2/ITO) on a sapphire substrate, the SiO2 film resulted in the dielectric strength of approximately 3 MV/cm. In addition, the highest optical transmittance obtained by the ITO/SiO2/ITO films is about 88.3%. The change in capacitance of the ITO/SiO2/ITO structure was approximately 3.2 pF, which indicates the possibility of implementation in capacitive touch-screen panel devices.

Semiconductor-based nanostructures which are photo-catalytically active upon solar light irradiation were extensively used for environmental remediation due to the potential decomposition of various kinds of pollutants.