Performance of silicon-air batteries using industrial silicon as anode

• Published in: Journal of materials science. Materials in electronics 2023-03, Vol.34 (9), p.800, Article 800
• Main Authors: Yang, Wei-tian, Yu, Jie, Li, Dong-xin, Hu, Shu-qiu, Ding, Xin, Chen, Feng-yu, Qiao, Cui
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Characterization and Evaluation of Materials; Chemistry and Materials Science; Discharge; Earth crust; Energy storage; Fuel cells; Materials Science; Metal air batteries; Optical and Electronic Materials; Silicon; Specific energy
• ISSN: 0957-4522; 1573-482X
• DOI: 10.1007/s10854-023-10191-6

Nowadays electrical energy storage technology is always looking for a more complete solution, from fuel cells to metal-air batteries. Among various metal-air batteries, silicon-air batteries which is a type of batteries with high specific energies seem to be one of the solutions. Silicon-air batteries stand out from the rest of metal-air batteries because of the high content of silicon in the earth’s crust, therefore have gained a lot of attention. Corresponding to plenty of experiments that had been done, we found that we can directly use industrial silicon as the anode of silicon-air batteries since industrial silicon itself contains trace number of other elements which more or less have impact on discharge performance of the batteries, and industrial silicon is easier to acquire comparing to pure silicon and doped silicon. The performance of silicon-air batteries is evaluated by its discharge behavior, actual specific energy and specific capacity. The prospective for aqueous silicon-air batteries are worthy of attention. And the silicon-air batteries using industrial silicon have no passivation on its anodic surface, which leads the batteries to discharge without terminating.