AdsorbedWater on Nano-Silicon Powder and Its Effects on Charge and Discharge Characteristics as Anode in Lithium-Ion Batteries

The amounts of adsorbed water on several kinds of carbon and silicon materials including Si nano-flake powder (Si LeafPowder, Si-LP) were determined at 250 degrees C. It was found that nano-sized Si materials adsorb a large amount of water even after being dried at 120 degrees C because of the hydrophilicity of the surface and the high specific surface area. The adsorbedwater on Si-LP can be removed, but not completely, after drying at a 180 degrees C. The charge and discharge characteristics of Si-LP, especially the initial irreversible capacity and the coulombic efficiencies upon repeated cycling, were significantly improved by removal of the adsorbed water at 180 degrees C. The 180 degrees C-dried sample also suppressed gas evolution during the initial charging and discharging cycle. From the results of gas analysis, it was found that gases evolved from the Si-LP electrodes were mainly H-2 and CO2. From the results of charge and discharge tests and gas analysis, the effect of the adsorbed water on the irreversible decomposition of the electrolyte solution was discussed. (C) The Author(s) 2016. Published by ECS. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (CC BY, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse of the work in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. All rights reserved.