Beach sand for long cycle life batteries

This is the holy grail – a low cost, non-toxic, environmentally friendly way to produce high performance lithium ion battery anodes
Zachary Favors

Schematic of the heat scavenger-assisted Mg reduction process.

Herein, porous nano-silicon has been synthesized via a highly scalable heat scavenger-assisted magnesiothermic reduction of beach sand. This environmentally benign, highly abundant, and low cost SiO₂ source allows for production of nano-silicon at the industry level with excellent electrochemical performance as an anode material for Li-ion batteries. The addition of NaCl, as an effective heat scavenger for the highly exothermic magnesium reduction process, promotes the formation of an interconnected 3D network of nano-silicon with a thickness of 8-10 nm. Carbon coated nano-silicon electrodes achieve remarkable electrochemical performance with a capacity of 1024 mAhg⁻¹ at 2 Ag⁻¹ after 1000 cycles.