A Low-Cost and Scalable Carbon Coated SiO-Based Anode Material for Lithium-Ion Batteries.

Silicon monoxide (SiO) is considered as one of the most promising alternative anode materials thanks to its high theoretical capacity, satisfying operating voltage and low cost. However, huge volume change, poor electrical conductivity, and poor cycle performance of SiO dramatically hindered its commercial application. In this work, we report an affordable and simple way for manufacturing carbon-coated SiO-C composites with good electrochemical performance on kilogram scales.

A low-overpotential sodium/fluorinated graphene battery based on silver nanoparticles as catalyst.

Fluorinated graphene (F-GNS) was synthesized using commercial graphene (GNS) as starting material and introduced in sodium batteries, which exhibited good rate performance, but large voltage gap between discharge and charge process. Ag nanoparticles were employed in freestanding and binder-free F-GNS electrode (the composite film electrode was labeled as FGA) as catalyst, which were shown to strongly facilitate the decomposition of NaF during charge process in sodium/carbon fluorides (Na/CF) secondary batteries. During discharge process, the discharge voltage with Ag was about the same as that of Na/F-GNS cell.