No Significant Effect of Phosphorous Doping on the Electrochemical Performance of Silicon-Carbon Composite Anodes for Li-ion Batteries

In this paper we demonstrate production of doped silicon nanoparticles and testing of the material in Li-ion battery half cells. Incorporation of 3 at% of phosphorous in the reactants of the free-space reactor used resulted in a doping level of 1.8 at%, a very high level of doping with regards to the standard in semiconductor silicon. However, even with this high level of doping, no significant effect was observed for cycling of silicon anodes using 60 wt% silicon. We propose that the benefit of doping silicon is masked by the effect of the conductive carbon and other additives used in preparation of the test cells.