Dow Corning Toray Co. Ltd. exhibited a silicon-containing carbon material for the negative electrode on lithium-ion secondary batteries at Automotive Engineering Exposition 2009.

It is a Si-O-C composite material produced by burning a Si-containing polymer material. Unlike the existing method to mix Si alloy with a carbon material, which has been studied thus far, the new production method is suitable to finely disperse Si particles, the company said.

The prototyped material has a current capacity of 650-800mAh/g, which is more than double that of graphite, a commonly-used material. In addition, it has a stable charge/discharge cycle performance because its expansion/contraction caused by charging/discharging is as small as that of graphite. For those characteristics, Dow Corning Toray expects that the material will be used for next-generation automotive lithium-ion secondary batteries.

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