Silicon-conductive nanopaper for Li-ion batteries

There is an increasing interest in the development of thin, flexible energy storage devices for new applications. For large scale and low cost devices, structures with the use of earth abundant materials are attractive. In this study, we fabricated flexible and conductive nanopaper aerogels with incorporated carbon nanotubes (CNT). Such conductive nanopaper is made from aqueous dispersions with dispersed CNT and cellulose nanofibers. Such aerogels are highly porous with open channels that allow the deposition of a thin-layer of silicon through a plasma-enhanced CVD (PECVD) method. Meanwhile, the open channels also allow for an excellent ion accessibility to the surface of silicon. We demonstrated that such lightweight and flexible Si-conductive nanopaper structure performs well as Li-ion battery anodes. A stable capacity of 1200 mA h/g for 100 cycles in half-cells is achieved. Such flexible anodes based on earth abundant materials and aqueous dispersions could potentially open new opportunities for low-cost energy devices, and potentially can be applied for large-scale energy storage.