Electron-Rich Driven Electrochemical Solid-State Amorphization in Li–Si Alloys
- 14 August 2013
- journal article
- Published by American Chemical Society (ACS) in Nano Letters
- Vol. 13 (9), 4511-4516
- https://doi.org/10.1021/nl402429a
Abstract
The physical and chemical behaviors of materials used in energy storage devices, such as lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), are mainly controlled by an electrochemical process, which normally involves insertion/extraction of ions into/from a host lattice with a concurrent flow of electrons to compensate charge balance. The fundamental physics and chemistry governing the behavior of materials in response to the ions insertion/extraction is not known. Herein, a combination of in situ lithiation experiments and large-scale ab initio molecular dynamics simulations are performed to explore the mechanisms of the electrochemically driven solid-state amorphization in Li–Si systems. We find that local electron-rich condition governs the electrochemically driven solid-state amorphization of Li–Si alloys. This discovery provides the fundamental explanation of why lithium insertion in semiconductor and insulators leads to amorphization, whereas in metals, it leads to a crystalline alloy. The present work correlates electrochemically driven reactions with ion insertion, electron transfer, lattice stability, and phase equilibrium.This publication has 36 references indexed in Scilit:
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