Possibility of Recycling SiOx Particles Collected at Silicon Ingot Production Process as an Anode Material for Lithium Ion Batteries

Junghyun Kim; So Yeun Kim; Cheol-Min Yang; Gyo Woo Lee

doi:10.1038/s41598-019-50011-8

Possibility of Recycling SiO_x Particles Collected at Silicon Ingot Production Process as an Anode Material for Lithium Ion Batteries

Sci Rep. 2019 Sep 16;9(1):13313. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-50011-8.

Authors

Junghyun Kim¹, So Yeun Kim², Cheol-Min Yang², Gyo Woo Lee³

Affiliations

¹ Division of Mechanical Design Engineering, Chonbuk National University, Jeonju, 54896, Republic of Korea.
² Institute of Advanced Composite Materials, Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), Wanju, Jeollabuk-do, 55324, Republic of Korea.
³ Division of Mechanical Design Engineering, Chonbuk National University, Jeonju, 54896, Republic of Korea. gwlee@jbnu.ac.kr.

Abstract

Recently, some studies have utilized silicon (Si) as an anode material of lithium ion battery by recycling Si from the slurry of wafer slicing dust. The filtration of Si particles condensed from Si vapors that were exhausted from the ingot growing furnace could propose another method of Si recycling. In this study, we investigated the possibility of using such collected silicon oxides (SiO_x) particles as an anode material. After collecting SiO_x particles, FE-SEM, TEM, EDS, XRD, XPS analysis, and charge/discharge test were carried out to investigate characteristics and usability of these particles. FE-SEM and FE-TEM images showed that these particles mainly consisted of spherical primary particles with a diameter of 10 nm or less. Agglomerates of these primary particles were larger than 300 nm in diameter. In TEM image and EDS analysis, crystalline particles were observed along with amorphous particles. As a result of XRD analysis, amorphous silica (SiO₂) and crystalline Si were observed. Charge/discharge tests were carried out to determine the feasibility of using these particles as an anode material for lithium ion batteries. A cycle efficiency of 40.6% was obtained in the test in which the total number of charge/discharge cycle was 100 under the condition of C-rate 0.2 for the first three times and C-rate 1.0 for the remaining 97 times. Results showed that these collected particles could be used as an anode material for lithium ion batteries.