United States Patent and Trademark Office >>
August 2, 2016: Patent for method of preparing an anode for a Li-ion battery granted to StoreDot
Forming nano-structured alloys may involve some degree of oxygen contamination. Nano-size particles, and in particular nano-size metallic particles, are highly reactive, having a high surface to volume ratio.
Therefore, nano-size metallic particles will be easily contaminated by oxygen atoms at almost every step in the manufacturing process. For example, oxygen may be included on the surface of the raw materials (metallic and non-metallic powders) and oxygen may react with the raw material powders during mixing or milling of the powders, and even during storage of the mixture.
Regardless of the protective atmosphere that is provided at each production stage, some oxygen atoms will be absorbed by, and react with, the surface of the nano-size metallic particles.
This disclosure covers a method of preparing an anode for a Li-ion Battery and comprises mixing metal particles containing at least one of Ge, Sn and Si particles with carbon particles to form a mixture, and deoxidizing the metal particles by heating the mixture in a vacuum atmosphere to form a deoxidized mixture. The deoxidation improves the Li-ion absorption performance of the anode.
