Northwestern University

Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources

Jiayan Luo

Jiaxing Huang

Hee Dong Jang

The invention relates to a host material for stabilizing a Li metal electrode, fabricating methods and applications of the same. The host material includes crumpled graphene balls operably defining a scaffold having volumes and voids inside and in between the crumpled graphene balls so as to allow uniform and stable Li deposition/dissolution inside and in between the crumpled graphene balls without electrode volume fluctuations or with sufficiently small electrode volume fluctuations. The crumpled paper ball-like structures of graphene particles can readily assemble to yield the scaffold with scalable Li loading up to 10 mAh cm-2 within tolerable volume fluctuations. High Coulombic efficiency of 97.5% over 750 cycles (1500 hours) is achieved. Plating/stripping Li up to 12 mAh cm-2 on the crumpled graphene scaffold does not experience dendrite growth.

Host material for stabilizing lithium metal electrode, and fabricating method and applications of same

Capsules comprising crumpled graphene sheets that form a crumpled graphene shell encapsulating an internal cargo comprising nanostructures of a second component are provided. Also provided are anode materials for lithium ion batteries comprising the capsules, wherein the nanostructures are composed of an electrochemically active material, such as silicon.

Crumpled graphene-encapsulated nanostructures and lithium ion battery anodes made therefrom

In one aspect of the present invention, a method of for synthesizing compression- and aggregation-resistant particles includes forming a graphene dispersion solution with micron-sized graphene-based material sheets, nebulizing the graphene dispersion solution to form aerosol droplets, passing the aerosol droplets through a horizontal tube furnace pre-heated at a predetermined temperature by a carrier gas, and drying the aerosol droplets to concentrate and compress the micron-sized graphene-based material sheets into crumpled particles of sub-micron scale.

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Evanston, IL, United States of America

Jiayan Luo