They report that this architecture allows compatibility between silicon and natural graphite and addresses the issues of severe side reactions caused by structural failure of crumbled graphite dust and uncombined residue
of silicon particles by conventional mechanical milling.
The
coated silicon particles lasted at least five times longer — uncoated particles died by 30 cycles, but the coated ones still carried a charge after 150 cycles.
The researchers managed to remove two long - standing barriers to these improvements by putting
silicon particles in graphene «cages.»
Undeterred, graduate student Mingyuan Ge and other members of Zhou's team built on their previous work to develop a cost - efficient method of producing
porous silicon particles through the simple and inexpensive methods of ball - milling and stain - etching.
Previous research has tested the use of FLG with nano - sized silicon but this new study has found that FLG can also dramatically improve the performance of larger micron - sized
silicon particles when used in an anode.
Due to its volume expansion upon
lithiation silicon particles can electrochemically agglomerate in ways that impede further charge - discharge efficiency over time.
The researchers created anodes that were a mixture of 60 %
micro silicon particles, 16 % FLG, 14 % Sodium / Polyacrylic acid, and 10 % carbon additives, and then examined the performance (and the changes in structure of the material) over a 100 charge - discharge cycles.
A team of researchers from the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, the University of Illinois at Chicago and the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) Argonne National Laboratory have
engineered silicon particles one - fiftieth the width of a human hair, which could lead to «biointerface» systems designed to make nerve cells fire and heart cells beat.
The hard piston ring sealing surface of the liners is created during manufacturing with a mechanical etching process that
exposes silicon particles embedded in the sleeves.
Ban's group — which developed the coating for silicon electrodes, called alucone, and is currently the only group that can create alucone -
coated silicon particles — took high magnification images of the particles in an electron microscope.
«More importantly, these FLG flakes can also prove very effective at preserving the degree of separation between
the silicon particles.
The team was able to activate the neurons using pulses of light to heat up
the silicon particles, causing current to flow through the cells.
The silicon particles are made up of a series of nanowires connected by thin bridges, which allows for high flexibility and porosity.
Jiang helped create
the silicon particles, which can be used to excite cells.
In conventional biointerfaces, materials must be hooked up to a source of energy, but because researchers need only apply light to use
the silicon particles, the new system is entirely wireless.
The material Jiang and colleagues developed is one - half of an electronic device that spontaneously creates itself when one of
the silicon particles is inserted into a cell culture, and eventually, the body.