Electroless Synthesis Approach for Cu₂o-CuO Nanowires/Whiskers on C-Felt for Lithium Ion Battery Anode Materials

Abstract

Lithium ion batteries (LIBs) have dominated the energy storage industry with carbon as the main anode material and also one of the limiting factors for improved capacity performance. With this widespread use of carbon as the anode, there is a need to evaluate other anode materials to improve LIB performance. Alternatives such as transition metal oxides are promising candidates [1, 2]. One such material with higher capacity than graphite anode material is copper oxide (674 mAh/g) [3,4]. Despite the positive attribute of copper oxide anode materials, pulverization and low-cost feasible fabrication method remain some of the issues impeding its application commercially in LIBs. It is well known that high surface area thin films and small particles reduce volume change and pulverization. As such we engineered copper oxide anode fabrication via use of electroless encapsulation technique. Conductive, porous, mesh-like, and free-standing carbon cloth that is lithium active was coated with very thin copper films electrolessly and oxidized by annealing at 150 and 300 O C in air, respectively. These yielded 150-Cu 2 O-CuO@C-Cloth and 300-Cu 2 O-CuO@C-Cloth materials that are binder-free and free-standing without the support of a current collector. SEM and XRD revealed the presence of the Cu 2 O-CuO whiskers. The C-Cloth, 150-Cu 2 O-CuO@C-Cloth and 300-Cu 2 O-CuO@C-Cloth materials were used as electrodes in LIBs and the lithiation capacities at first cycle were 300 mAh/g, 450 mAh/g and 510 mAh/g, respectively. Our results indicate that our synthesis approach is feasible to obtain lithium storing anode materials for LIBs. Figure 1 shows the 1 st cycle discharge capacities of C-Cloth, 150 Cu 2 O-CuO@C-Cloth and 300 Cu 2 O-CuO@C-Cloth materials when used as electrodes in LIBs. REFERENCES Ding, J. S. Chen and X. W. Lou, Adv. Funct. Mater., 2011, 21, 4120–4125. Liang, H. Hu, H. Park, C. Xiao, S. Ding, U. Paik and X. W. Lou, Energy Environ. Sci., 2015, 8, 1707–1711. Kim, S. Kim, S. Han, D. Kwak, E. Hwang, D. Kim, G. Lee, H. Choe and K. Park, J. Mater. Chem. A, 2015, 3, 23003–23010. Zhu , D. Chao, J. Sun , I. Bacho, Z. Fan,C. Ng, X. Xia, H. Huang, H. Zhang, Z. Shen , G. Ding, and H. Fan, Adv. Mater. Interfaces 2014, 1400499-1400505. Figure 1