Prelithiation is an important strategy to compensate for lithium loss in lithium-ion batteries, particularly during the formation of solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) from reduced electrolytes in the first charging cycle. We recently demonstrated that thermal-alloying synthesized LixSi nanoparticles (NPs) can serve as a high-capacity prelithiation reagent although its chemical stability in the battery processing environment remained to be improved. Here we successfully developed a surface modification method to enhance the stability of LixSi NPs by exploiting the reduction of 1-fluorodecane on the LixSi surface to form a continuous and dense coating, through a similar reaction process to SEI formation. The coating, consisting of LiF and Li alkyl carbonate with long hydrophobic carbon chains, serves as an effective passivation layer under ambient environment. Remarkably, artificial-SEI protected LixSi NPs show a high prelithiation capacity of 2100 mAh/g with negligible capacity decay in dry air after 5 days and maintain a high capacity of 1600 mAh/g in humid air (~10% relative humidity (RH)). Silicon, tin and graphite were successfully prelithiated with these NPs to eliminate the irreversible first cycle capacity loss. The use of prelithiation reagents offers a new approach to realize next generation high-energy-density lithium-ion batteries.

J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2015, DOI: 10.1021/jacs.5b04526

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/jacs.5b04526