Wednesday, 1 June 2016
Exhibit Hall H (San Diego Convention Center)
Copper nanowire network has recently been considered as a promising current collector which can replace the conventional copper foil commercially used in lithium secondary batteries. Using this new kind of current collector and silicon as the active material, two different Cu-Si nanostructured electrodes were fabricated, i.e., Cu-Si core-shell nanostructure by vapor deposition of Si onto Cu nanowire network and Si nanoparticle decorated Cu nanowire network by solution mixing and co-settling. The former showed excellent rate and cycle performance, i.e., the specific capacity over 1,000 mAh/g @ 4 A/g with no capacity decay during 100 cycles, while the latter showed higher capacity (~2,400 mAh/g @ 0.1 A/g) with poor rate performance. The contact resistance between Cu nanowires and Si active materials played crucial role in the electrochemical performance of Cu-Si nanostructured anodes. With these preliminary results and the full mechanistic understanding of Cu nanowire growth in solution, the practical applications of the copper nanowire network current collector are discussed.