Composite Si–Ni nanoparticles produced by plasma spraying physical vapor deposition for negative electrode in Li-ion batteries

Abstract

Si–Ni composite nanoparticles have been produced by a single and continuous plasma spray physical vapor deposition (PS-PVD) from Si and Ni powder feedstocks and their electrochemical performances as anode in lithium-ion batteries (LiB) are investigated. Si nanoparticles with 20–40 nm on which Ni is directly attached with Si/NiSi2 epitaxial interface are formed spontaneously through co-condensation of high temperature elemental gas mixtures during PS-PVD. When only a little amount of Ni is added to Si, the effect of the epitaxial Ni attachment on the Si nanoparticles becomes evident; the cycle capacity is appreciably improved to reach a 1.6 times higher capacity than that of the Si only cell after 50 cycles, due to reduced charge-transfer resistance and nanosized Si particle. In contrast, excessive Ni addition to Si feedstock leads to formation of various silicides as a result of the accelerated silicidation during PS-PVD, which results in a significant decrease in the cycle capacity due to reduction of the active Si phase amount despite reduced charge-transfer resistance.

Study on liquid-like SiGe cluster growth during co-condensation from supersaturated vapor mixtures by molecular dynamics simulation

“…However, although the cluster shape is not perfectly spherical, the composition of global clusters and even the attached two parts themselves are close to the nominal system. This is different from Si–Ag, 16 Si–Ni, 44 and other immiscible systems, where the pure attached clusters are usually observed. 15,42,45,46 It is important to obtain Si–Ge films with uniform composition when such clusters are used as components of precursors during cluster-assisted deposition.…”

Feasibility of silicon nanoparticles produced by fast-rate plasma spray PVD for high density lithium-ion storage

“…), the averaged discharge retention from 1st to 3rd cycle (Re 1−3 ), where the C-rate is relatively small at 0.02 C, and the discharge retention at the 50th with respect to that of the 4th cycle (Re 50/4 ). According to the equivalent circuit fitting considering the resistance of electrolyte (R sol ), R ct , the constant phase element and Warburg impedance (Z w ) [13,14,40,49], R ct of the cell with Si greater than 150 nm is estimated to be 350 Ω which is more than doubled compared with the cells with smaller Si nanoparticles (<100 nm), due potentially to relatively small specific surface area. The I.C.E.…”

“…In fact, Si nanoparticles are produced by PS-PVD from metallurgical grade Si (mg-Si), and an improved cycle capacity using these nanoparticles is confirmed [34,35]. Moreover, if one uses powder mixtures of Si with the secondary element as feedstock, uniquely-structured nanoparticles have been synthesized through co-condensation of vapor mixtures [35][36][37][38][39][40].…”

All‐Solid‐State Thin Film μ‐Batteries for Microelectronics

“…There are many available deposition technologies for thin film growth, including sol-gel method, [301][302][303][304] inkjet printing, [305,306] rf-sputtering, [174,206,210,229,230,258,307,308] plasma spray PVD (PS-PVD), [309] PLD, [310,311,312] chemical vapor deposition (CVD), [313] aerosol deposition, [314] ion-beam assisted deposition, [315] and ebeam evaporation. [316] The review article by Lobe et al [308] well documented various deposition technologies.…”