Conversion of the energy landscape from fossil fuels to renewables strongly depend on the availability of cheap and reliable energy storage solutions. Rechargeable batteries represent the most appealing technology. Among those Li-ion-battery (LiB) represent the most developed technology, which delivers not only the highest energy density, but also demonstrates long-term durability and high capacity. Such properties positioned LiB technology as a primary solution for portable electronics as well as emerged electric vehicles and in-house stationary energy storage. Having a dominant position on the market LiBs technology at its present stage has almost reached its ceiling, while the modern world's activities require more energy to be stored and wider deployment. Therefore, further developments of are necessary to satisfy the rapidly growing demands of the energy storage market.
Several approaches are represented in the scientific literature and directed towards improvement of energy density of LiBs while maintaining long-term performance. Among these solutions, the replacement of the battery anode (alternative to the currently utilized graphite) was found to be potentially the simplest and the most economical pathway for the technology improvement without major investments into manufacturing infrastructure. Silicon was found to be a material of choice for LiB anodes due to its abundancy, low price, stability and wide deployment in the semiconductor industry. Moreover, silicon has demonstrated a remarkable storage capacity for the Li ions, which could improve the battery capacity by almost an order of magnitude. However, substantial structural/morphological changes during lithiation/delithiation results in fast degradation of the batteries fabricated with Si-anodes. The primary aim of the present project is to develop a feasible strategy which will allow minimizing anode degradation and therefore increase the battery lifetime. A large effort is devoted to achieving an optimized coating of the particles that can slow down the degradation considerably.