Nanoporous silicon from low-cost natural clinoptilolite for lithium storage

Abstract

Despite the fact that silicon materials can be synthesized from various sources, deriving them from earth-abundant resources is of strategic significance for industrial processing. Here nanoporous silicon (pSi) was derived from earth-abundant natural clinoptilolite (NCLI) without complicated pretreatment. After surface carbon coating, the pSi–C composite displayed a superior stable capacity of ca. 1257 mA h g⁻¹ and good cycling stability with 87.5% capacity retention on the 200th cycle versus the 3rd one, which benefit from its nanoporous structure, very small primary particle size of ∼10 nm and highly conductive carbon-matrix.