From the article : A new spin on silicon: Liquid precursor fabricates silicon nanowires to boost battery capacity, decrease cost...
CHS will be a very successful new material for uses in many different markets ...GREAT THINGS AHEAD !!!
While expansion isn’t necessarily a bad thing—to some extent, it’s a really good thing—too much expansion definitely is. During lithiation, silicon expands up to 400%, which causes cracking and catastrophic failure within the battery.
Researchers at North Dakota State University (Fargo, N.D.) in collaboration with Pacific Northwest National Lab (Richland, Wash.) have made important progress in an alternative strategy to incorporate silicon into the anodes of lithium-ion batteries, however: silicon nanowires.
Nanowires can help mitigate the problems that have plagued silicon’s expansion problem, with the additional bonus that nanowires provide enhanced surface area within the battery as well.
The researchers electrospun amorphous silicon nanowires from a liquid precursor containing cyclohexasilane (Si6H12) and polymer carriers. And, added bonus: Using a liquid silicon precursor can help reduce fabrication costs.
That’s because silicon is normally incorporated into electronics from a gas (such as silane), but transporting such silicon-containing gases comes with their own slate of safety issues, which increases cost.
But liquid cyclohexasilane doesn’t transition into a gas until ~400ºF, meaning that, like natural gas, it can be transported as a liquid—which is safer and thus cheaper, according to Doug Freitag, VP of Technology and Business Development at 3DIcon, the company that is commercially advancing the cyclohexasilane technology.
The liquid precursor also contains much more silicon that its alternative gases, so liquid cyclohexasilane increases fabrication rate—again equating to time and thus cost savings.
And its potential reach extends beyond batteries, too—Freitag says that the liquid silicon source is promising for the solar industry as well. Directly printing liquid silicon onto the siding of a house, for example, would afford the ability to integrate solar energy harvesting onto existing building materials. Yet another potential market for the liquid silicon is printable electronics, which would allow advances such as smart packaging, Freitag adds.
