UC Riverside

As the demand for higher capacity, longer lasting lithium ion battery rises, finding a new material system that can replace the current commercial lithium ion battery system has become the necessity. Out of all possible candidates, nickel oxide, silicon shows potential for next generation anode material, and sulfur promises great improvement if used as the cathode material. In this work, new lithium ion battery systems utilizing nickel oxide, silicon, and sulfur were developed and studied using both physical and electrochemical characterization techniques. The free-standing nickel oxide nanofiber cloth anode shows a high capacity of 1054 mAh/g cycling at 20 minuets per charge. It also shows a cycle life of over 1500 cycles. The novel silicon sulfur full cell architecture presents a functioning silicon sulfur system that does not require prelithiation and shows a energy density of 350 Wh/kg for 250 cycles. The novel plateau targeted conditioning method for sulfur half cells shows a 10% increase in battery capacity and great increase in battery stability, as well as proof of stable sei formation on both the anode and cathode.