Strategy to form homogeneously macroporous Si as enhanced anode material of Li-ion batteries

Overheating caused by exothermic effect of magnesiothermic reduction reaction is usually considered as a drawback in preparing porous silicon anode materials for Li-ion batteries. However, in the present work, thermal effect is available in facile preparation of macroporous Si by tabletting pretreatment. The released heat in magnesiothermic reaction is easily accumulated on the tablet with high density, leading to the collapse of the mesoporous structure of the precursor and formation of uniform macroporous silicon. Such macroporous silicon shows a higher initial Coulomb efficiency (86.5%) and enhanced cycling stability in comparison with mesoporous silicon prepared without tabletting treatment. XRD analysis indicates that the reaction temperature decreases to 430–435 °C (based on set temperature), much lower than that of the reaction without pretreatment. Since the structure of product has less dependency on precursor, a wide variety of precursors can be used to synthesize macroporous silicon, e.g. low cost biosilica. Being ascribed to low reaction temperature, heating rate insensitivity, less dependency on precursor, enhanced cycling performance and high initial Coulomb efficiency of the Si products, the modified magnesiothermic reduction method is promising for application in fabricating Si anode.