Our innovation has the potential to improve the current lithium-ion battery by replacing a traditional graphitic anode with a graphene-wrapped silicon electrode. Not only were our researchers able to demonstrate good performance with laboratory-scale half-cells, the performance was also validated with commercial lithium iron phosphate cathodes suggesting they could be a drop-in solution for enhancing already available battery technologies.
Key characteristics of graphene-wrapped silicon anode include:
- At practical mass loading of 2.5mg/cm2, the electrode achieved 2.04 mAh/cm2 and retained 79% of this capacity after 200 cycles against a lithium half-cell,
- When paired with a commercial lithium iron phosphate cathode, the fully assembled battery retained 93.3% of its initial capacity over 100 cycles,
- Works with current lithium-ion batteries as a replacement for graphite.
This innovation requires further development and optimization work before it can be commercialized.