SiO2/C Composite Derived from Rice Husks with Enhanced Capacity as Anodes for Lithium-Ion Batteries

High-capacity SiO2/C composites with uniform distribution, rice husks (RHs) as raw materials, were scalably prepared by the ball milling method. Based on a fact that the porous SiO2 nanoparticles and carbon in RHs possess natural properties, ball mill could visibly decrease grain sizes of clustering SiO2 particles and C blocks and then improve the dispersivity of the two components, finally forming desirable SiO2/C composite, which can generate more active sites for Li+ storage as well as can effectively buffer the volume change during cycling. Therefore, SiO2/C composites, evaluated as anode for lithium ion batteries, exhibited an excellent electrochemical performance, especially the highly reversible capacity of 827 mA h g(-1) over 300 cycles at 100 mA g(-1) and 530 mA h g(-1) at the large rate of 500 mA g(-1), which suggests that the facile ball mill with environmental friendliness and large-scale preparation may be available for electrode materials derived from biomass.