Over the last few decades a vast number of researchers have investigated various methods for the synthesis of tin alloy anode materials capable of repeated cycling, reduced tin pulverization, and capacity retention when used in lithium ion batteries (LIBs).^1-3 In this study, we report the use of woven carbon cloth as high surface area template for the deposition of Cu and subsequent encapsulation with Sn via facile electroless coating method without the use of external power supply. The resulting material Sn-Cu@C-cloth was annealed at 200 ^OC and 400 ^OC and used as electrodes in LIB half-cells with Li metal as anode. Charge/discharge study at current density of 227 mAh/g indicated that Sn-Cu@C-cloth annealed at 200^OC and 400 ^OC exhibited first cycle capacities of 745 mAh/g, and 1075 mAh/g, respectively, while the C-cloth substrate exhibited only 340 mAh/g. Preliminary results after fifty cycles indicated that the annealed Sn-Cu@C-cloth exhibited capacity retention of ~413 mAh/g. These results indicate that facile electroless encapsulation of carbon cloth as a cost effective approach can potentially be used to fabricate Sn and CuSn alloys anode materials.

References

[1] M. Winter, J.O. Besenhard, Electrochemical lithiation of tin and tin-based intermetallics and composites, Electrochimica Acta 45 (1999) 31.

[2] A.R. Kamali, D.J. Fray, tin-based materials materials as advanced anode materials for lithium ion batteries: A review, Rev. Adv. Mater. Sci. 27 (2011) 14.

[3] H. Kim, G.O. Park, Y. Kim, S. Muhammad, J. Yoo, M. Balasubramanian, Y.-H. Cho, M-G. Kim, B. Lee, K. Kang, H. Kim, J. M. Kim, W.-S. Yoon, New insight into the reaction mechanism for exceptional capacity of ordered mesoporous SnO₂ electrodes via synchrotron-based x-ray analysis, Chem. Mater. 26 (2014) 6361.