The capacity, cycle life and CE of nano-Si anodes were achieved
without any further material modification, such as surface coating.
And we used standard polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) binder,
regarded to be poor for Si anodes, for all the electrochemical tests.
With PVDF, commercial,100 nm SiNPs lose over 50% of the capacity
within only 5 cycles21. Instead, the small size (10–40 nm) and
porous nature of the RH derived nano-Si effectively accommodated
the volume change of Si and improve the stability significantly. And
we expected that surface coatings39,40, or binders such as sodium
alginate21, polyacrylic acid41, and conducting polymer42 can further
improve the performance of the nano-Si anodes.