Study on the effect of intrinsic electrical resistivity of silicon materials on its performance for Li-ion batteries

Abstract In this work, broken silicon (Si) wafers with electrical resistivity of 1 Ω cm, 0.1 Ω cm and 0.01 Ω cm and 0.001 Ω cm were ball-milled to form Si powders for being used as anode materials for Lithium ion batteries (LIBs). As a result, in relation to other three Si wafers, 0.001 Ω cm-Si-wafer presents the highest first discharge and charge capacity, which is 543.4 mAhg −1 and 457.7 mAhg −1 (Si: Carbon=5: 95, weight ratio), respectively. Besides, Si wafer with lower electrical resistivity was found to have better electrochemical properties, including higher charge and discharge capacities at different current densities and lower impedance. In addition, 0.001 Ωcm-Si-wafer shows 65.5 mAhg −1 (1310 mAhg −1 from Si materials after calculation) higher in charge capacity than that of 1 Ωcm-Si-wafer. Results obtained in this study are good for the selection of Si raw materials for LIBs.