Progress, Challenges, and Perspectives on Alloy-Based Anode Materials for Lithium Ion Battery: A Mini-Review

The ever increasing demand for a wide range of energy storage applications requires lithium ion batteries (LIBs) of high energy and power densities. Traditional anode materials like graphite are unable to meet these requirements due to their low theoretical capacity and safety issues. In this context, alloy materials demonstrate a great potential to be used as propitious alternative anode materials for realizing high energy density LIBs, on account of their unique characteristics such as exceptionally high lithium storage capacities, moderate operating potential, environmental benignity, safety, and high abundance. However, their widespread use has been hindered by their poor cycle life and high first cycle irreversible capacity, which stem from their adverse volume expansion and consequent fracturing of electrode. Tremendous research efforts have been devoted to ameliorating these problems, and fruitful results are being reported. This review discusses the different alloy-based anode materials used in LIBs, the major challenges experienced by such anode materials, and recent research progress made for improving their electrochemical performance.