Improving anode performances of lithium-ion capacitors employing carbon-Si composites

The lithium-ion capacitor is a promising energy storage system with a higher energy density than traditional supercapacitors.However,its cycling and rate performances,which depend on the electrochemical properties of the anode,are still required to be improved.In this work,soft carbon anodes reinforced using carbon-Si composites of various compositions were fabricated to investigate their beneficial influences on the performance of lithium-ion capacitors.The results showed that the specific capacities of the anodes increased significantly by 16.6 mAh g^(-1) with 1.0 wt% carbon-Si composite,while the initial discharge efficiency barely changed.The specific capacity of the anode with a 10.0 wt% carbon-Si composite reached 513.1 mAh g^(-1),and the initial discharge efficiency was 83.79%.Furthermore,the anodes with 7.5 wt% or lower amounts of carbon-Si composite demonstrated reduced charge transfer resistances,which caused an improvement in the rate performance of the lithium-ion capacitors.Moreover,the use of the optimized amount(7.5 wt%) of carbon-Si composite in the anode could significantly improve the cycling performance of the lithium-ion capacitor by compensating the consumption of active lithium.The capacity retention of the lithium-ion capacitor reached 95.14% at 20 C after 10,000 cycles,while the anode potential remained below 0.412 V,which is much lower than that of a soft carbon anode.