Micrometer-sized ferrosilicon composites wrapped with multi-layered carbon nanosheets as industrialized anodes for high energy lithium-ion batteries

Various nanostructured architectures have been demonstrated to be effective to address the issues of high capacity Si anodes. However, the scale-up of these nano-Si materials is still a critical obstacle for commercialization. Herein, we use industrial ferrosilicon as low-cost Si source and introduce a facile and scalable method to fabricate a micrometer-sized ferrosilicon/C composite anode, in which ferrosilicon microparticles are wrapped with multi-layered carbon nanosheets. The multi-layered carbon nanosheets could effectively buffer the volume variation of Si as well as create an abundant and reliable conductivity framework, ensuring fast transport of electrons. As a result, the micrometer-sized ferrosilicon/C anode achieves a stable cycling with 805.9 mAh g−1 over 200 cycles at 500 mA g−1 and a good rate capability of 455.6 mAh g−1 at 10 A g−1. Therefore, our approach based on ferrosilicon provides a new opportunity in fabricating cost-effective, pollution-free, and large-scale Si electrode materials for high energy lithium-ion batteries.