Surface Controlled Silicon Nanoparticles Production and Their Effects on High Capacity and High Cyclability of All-Solid-State Lithium-Ion Batteries
Authors: Kambara Makoto , Ohta Ryoshi , Hiraoka Takeo , Dougakiuchi Masashi 
Published: February 2024

Si nanoparticle is expected as anode for high density Lithium-ion batteries as as it facilitates high capacity and high cyclability simultaneously owing to its structural robustness to suppress fracture during cycled (de)lithiation reactions. Direct TEM observation has revealed that the particle size of 150 nm is the threshold for facture and the particles smaller than 150 nm are anticipated to contribute to the structural stability during cycles. However, the surface of silicon nanoparticle is oxidized spontaneously and the specific surface area increases significantly with decreasing the particle size. Accordingly, the specific oxygen content of the Si active material becomes inevitably high for smaller nanoparticles. High oxygen content in Si anode decreases the initial efficiency and capacityas a result of irreversible silicate formation. Therefore, smaller nanoparticle with a limited amount of oxidation would be ideal and necessary to attain high capacity and high cyclability. However, there is few report on the approach to suppress oxidation of smaller silicon nanoparticles and discuss the effect of size and oxygen content separately. Also, no general understanding of the effect of the particle size and oxygen for the case of all-solid-state batteries (ASSBs). In this work, we have produced Si nanoparticles with differently controlled size and oxygen content by plasma flash evaporation (PFE) from low-cost powder feedstock, and the effect of characteristic oxide surface structure on the battery performance of ASSBs with Argyrodite electrolyte has been identified.
We have successfully produced the nanoparticles as small as 20 nm and reduced the oxygen content x in SiOx representation from the standard amount of 0.24 to 0.049. As a result, the initial discharged capacity can be improved by 110% while attaining similar cyclabilities. When we compare the nanoparticles with different sizes ranging from 20 nm to 165 nm and having small oxygen content x < 0.05, although the initial discharged capacities are almost the same for these particles, only the particle with 165 nm shows rapid capacity decay in 10 cycles, whereas the 20 nm and 84 nm particles tend to maintain the capacity similarly. This confirms that the particles smaller than 100 nm are effective to maintain high capacity also in ASSBs under a low 0.1 C-rate condition. Furthermore, XPS analysis revealed that the surface of the particles with less oxidation is composed of suboxide Si-O bond oxide preferentially and the amount of Si-O4 bond is less than the conventional particles covered by the oxide shell, with which the Si-O bond ratio is described by the conventional random bond model. No apparent dependence of the capacity with the amount of Si-O4 bond. However, the surface oxide shell thickness estimated by the Si-O bond amount and the total oxygen content has shown a clear linear correlation with the charged capacity, irrespective of the particle size. This suggests that the surface oxide thickness affects significantly the amount of the lithiation reaction and is ideally as thin as possible to attain high capacity, especially for the case of ASSBs.