Si nanoplates prepared by ball milling photovoltaic silicon sawdust waste as lithium-ion batteries anode material

High-purity Si sawdust waste from the photovoltaic industry is an available source for Si anodes of lithioum-ion batteries (LIBs), but seeking for a synthetic process featuring with low cost and industrial scale from the Si waste to nanoscale Si materials in actual applications is quite challenging. Herein, we report a highly scalable and cost-effective ball milling method that directly converts photovoltaic Si sawdust waste to Si nano-plate (BM Si) for LIBs’ anode material. In the ball milling process, a thin SiO2 layer generates on BM Si. The nanoscale size of BM Si and SiO2 layer can buffer volume change of Si anode during cycling. As a result, BM Si displays a high initial capacity of 2196 mAh/g and remains a stable capacity of 1480 mAh/g after 100 cycles at 100 mA g−1, which is higher than that of commercial Si nanoparticles.