The high-capacity silicon anode is regarded as a promising electrode material for next-generation lithium-ion batteries. Unfortunately, its practical application is still severely hindered by electrode fracture and unstable solid electrolyte interphase during cycling. Herein, we design a structure of encapsulating silicon in a robust "janus shell", in which an internal graphene shell with sufficient void space is used to absorb the mechanical stress induced by volume expansion, and the conformal carbon outer shell is introduced to strongly bond the loosely stacked graphene shell and simultaneously seal the nanopores on the surface. With the ultrastable janus carbon shell, the excellent structural integrity of the electrode and stable solid electrolyte interphase layer could be effectively preserved, resulting in an impressive cycling behavior. Indeed, the as-synthesized anodes demonstrate superior cycle stability and excellent rate performance, delivering a high reversible capacity of 1416 mA h g-1 at a current density of 0.2 A g-1 and 852 mA h g-1 at a high current density of 5 A g-1. Remarkably, the superior capacity retention of 88.5% could be achieved even after 400 cycles at a high current density of 2 A g-1. More importantly, this work opens up a novel avenue to address high-capacity anodes with a large volume change.
Keywords: conformal coating; janus shell; lithium-ion batteries; silicon anode; solid electrolyte interphase.