Doped silicon nanowires for lithium ion battery anodes

Abstract

Nanostructured silicon (Si) has showed outstanding results as Li-ion battery anode material. Fabrication of nanostructured silicon anode materials is usually very complex, time consuming and expensive. In this work, silicon nanowires (SiNW's) were produced by using rapid and uncostly metal catalyzed electroless etching (MCEE) method from various silicon wafers with different dopant atoms and concentrations. We have investigated the effect of doping level on capacities and cycle stability. Highly doped silicon nanowires produced better results than lightly doped silicon nanowires due to their highly conductive and highly porous nature. Arsenic doped silicon nanowire anode electrodes have reached a capacity of 3635 mAh/g for the first lithiation and maximum 25% charge capacity loss after the 15th cycle. Owing to their small size and porosity this highly doped silicon nanowires showed very high performance and cycle retention as a lithium ion battery anode material.