Metal Oxide-Based Anode Materials for Lithium-Ion Battery

The anode of a lithium-ion battery (LIB), being one of the main components, usually offers high capacity, but low voltage as compared to their cathode counterpart. Anodes of LIBs can be categorized into three groups according to their electrochemical reaction mechanism, namely, intercalation/deintercalation, alloying/de-alloying, and conversion type. The intercalation anodes are advantageous with their structure and capacity remaining stable with insignificant volume changes during Li⁺ insertion/extraction. However, they usually deliver a low limited capacity, for instance, graphite and Li₄Ti₅O₁₂ have low capacities (372 mA h g⁻¹) and (175 mA h g⁻¹), respectively. The alloying-based anodes mostly exhibit high specific capacity by transferring multi-electrons, for instance, Si gives 4211 mA h g⁻¹ and Sn delivers 911 mA h g⁻¹. However, the capacities of these electrodes fade severely due to the extreme volume expansion that eventually leads to cracking and pulverization of particles and repeated formation/decomposition of the solid electrolyte interphase. Metal oxide-based conversion type anode materials are attracting great attention by offering high specific capacities as high as 1000 mA h g⁻¹, about three times that of graphite 340 mA h g⁻¹. As the anode materials receive a huge amount of lithium ions during charge/discharge cycling, their initial volume changes extensively. These anodes face huge challenges of rapid capacity fading due to volume change that results in cracking and pulverization of the electrodes. This chapter reviews the recent development of metal oxide-based anodes for a lithium-ion battery. The different strategic approaches to curb the capacity-fading problem will be reviewed and the current research trends will be presented.