Invited Presentation: The Roles of Graphene in Lithium Batteries

Graphene attracts increasing interest in lithium storage because of the significant improvement in electrochemical performance of graphene-based electrode materials. Synergistic effects between graphene and electrode materials and the beneficial roles of graphene in composite electrodes are found. It is demonstrated that, when the composites are used as electrode materials for lithium storage, compared to their individual constituents, graphene composites with unique structures such as anchoring, wrapping, encapsulating, sandwiching, buffering, layering and mixing have a significant improvement in their electrochemical properties such as high capacity, high rate capability and excellent cycling stability. The roles of graphene are found mainly to form a conductive network, increase ion conductivity, anchor and trap electrode materials.