Sandwich electrode designed for high performance lithium-ion battery.

We fabricated a sandwich structure Li-ion battery electrode by trapping micron-sized silicon between a copper current collector and a graphene coating. During dynamic electrochemical cycles, the volume change of the silicon can be buffered by the coating through the deformation of soft graphenes. This structure can effectively prevent the silicon particles from escaping from the current collector while keeping the buffered graphene coating integrated and unbroken during deformation. The electrodes could be maintained for 400 cycles at a constant charge capacity of 1000 mA h g(-1).