Glass bottles based silicon electrode materials

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-11367869-B2
Application number	US-201916388660-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Apr 18, 2019
Priority date	Apr 19, 2018
Publication date	Jun 21, 2022
Grant date	Jun 21, 2022

Abstract

Various embodiments provide glass bottle-based silicon electrode materials. A battery electrode includes silicon made from magnesiothermic reduction of silicon oxide derived from glass bottles and a conformal carbon coating thereon. A method of making the electrode material includes crushing glass bottles to produce crushed glass containing silicon oxide particles, mixing the silicon oxide particles with a heat scavenger to produce a mixture, magnesiothermically reducing the mixture to produce silicon, and applying a carbon coat to the silicon to produce an electrode material.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method of making an electrode material comprising:
crushing glass bottles to produce crushed glass containing silicon oxide particles;
separating out light weight silicon oxide particles from the crushed glass;
mixing the silicon oxide particles with a heat scavenger to produce a mixture;
magnesiothermically reducing the mixture to produce silicon, wherein the silicon comprises an interconnected three-dimensional silicon network; and
applying a carbon coat to the silicon to produce an electrode material.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the silicon oxide particles are lightweight silicon oxide particles.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein separating out light weight silicon oxide particles comprises:
suspending the crushed glass in a solvent;
allowing larger silicon oxide particles to settle; and
collecting the light weight silicon oxide particles.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein crushing the glass bottles comprises hammering the glass bottles to produce crushed glass.

5. The method of claim 4 , further comprises milling the crushed glass to produce lightweight silicon oxide particles.

6. The method of claim 1 , further comprising milling the silicon oxide particles prior to mixing the silicon dioxide particles with the heat scavenger.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the heat scavenger is sodium chloride.

8. The method of claim 1 , wherein mixing the silicon oxide particles with a heat scavenger comprises milling the silicon oxide particles with the heat scavenger to produce the mixture.

9. The method of claim 8 , further comprising resuspending and vacuum drying the mixture.

10. The method of claim 1 , wherein magnesiothermically reducing the mixture comprises adding magnesium to the mixture and heating.

11. The method of claim 10 , wherein heating is done at a range from about 650° C. to about 750° C. for about 6 hours.

12. The method of claim 1 , further comprising removing excess heat scavenger and magnesium compounds.

13. The method of claim 1 , further comprising removing unreacted silicon dioxide.

14. The method of claim 1 , wherein applying a carbon coat comprises chemical vapor deposition.

Assignees

• Univ California

Inventors

• Ozkan Cengiz S
• Ozkan Mihrimah
• Liu Chueh
• Li Changling
• Wang Wei

Classifications

• H01M4/625

  Carbon or graphite · CPC title

• H01M2004/027

  Negative electrodes · CPC title

• H01M4/386 Primary

  Silicon or alloys based on silicon · CPC title

• H01M4/0428

  Chemical vapour deposition · CPC title

• H01M10/0525

  Rocking-chair batteries, i.e. batteries with lithium insertion or intercalation in both electrodes; Lithium-ion batteries · CPC title