Silicon-based anode materials for lithium batteries: recent progress, new trends, and future perspectives

Silicon (Si)-based materials are intensively pursued as the most promising anode materials for next-generation lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) owing to their high theoretical mass-specific capacity, moderate working potential, and high abundance in the earth’s crust. Therefore, it has attracted widespread attention both from academia and industries. Despite the above advantages, the electrochemical performance is hampered by severe volume variation, resulting in poor cyclability and subsequently electrode failure. In this regard, nanostructured Si anodes and their composite electrodes might overcome these problems holding back the utilization of Si-based anodes in LIBs by providing facetious strain relaxation, short lithium diffusion distance, improved mass transport, and efficacious electrical contact. This review offers a holistic summary of chemistry, uniqueness, synthetic strategies, and practical applications of Si-based materials with a focus on presenting the development in the Si nanotubes, nanoparticles, nanowires, porous Si, SiOx, their composite materials with carbon, graphene cages, metals, and metal oxides as anode materials in LIBs. In the end, we present the research outlook for the development of Si/SiOx/C-based materials in the future, including fundamental design and various applications in addressing the challenges mentioned earlier.