Facile and Scalable Approach to Fabricate Granadilla-Like Porous Structured Silicon-Based Anode for Lithium Ion Batteries.

A porous silicon and carbon composite (PSi/C) with granadilla-like structure as an anode material for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) has been easily fabricated via spray drying and a subsequent pyrolysis treatments. For the PSi/C, yolk-shell structured Si/C nanobeads are uniformly distributed inside the porous carbon framework. The key point of this work is the combination of the advantages of both the yolk-shell structure and porous structure in one system. The void space inside the yolk-shell Si/C nanobeads and the interconnected three-dimensional porous carbon frameworks can effectively improve the cycling stability and conductivity of this composite when used as anode in LIBs. As expected, PSi/C with 15.4 % silicon content exhibited a high specific capacity of approximately 1357.43 mAh g-1 and retained 933.62 mAh g-1 after 100 cycles at a current density of 100 mA g-1. Moreover, it showed a high reversible specific capacity of 610.38 mAh g-1 at a high current density of 1000 mA g-1, even after 3000 cycles.