Ali A. Ensafi, Mehdi Mokhtari Abarghoui and Behzad Rezaei,

Herein, metal (nickel and bismuth) nanoparticles are supported on porous silicon flour (PSiF). Then they are proposed
as high-performance anode materials for lithium ion battery. In this way, a facile procedure is introduced for the in-situ
electroless assembling of nickel and bismuth nanoparticles on PSiF without using any reducing agent. The Metal@PSiF
nanostructures with different Metal/Si ratio are prepared through the chemical reduction of the metals ions and oxidation
of the surface of Si atoms, in a solution containing fluoride ions. The composition and morphological properties of the
nanostructures are investigated using SEM, XRD, XPS and EDS. Also, galvanostatic charge-discharge and cyclic voltammetry
are used to evaluate the electrochemical performance of the proposed anode materials. The synthesized Bi@PSiF
nanostructure offers a specific capacity of 3245 mAh g−1 at the 0.1 C rate while the Ni@PSiF shows a specific capacity
of 2585 mAh g−1 at the same C-rate. Both nanostructure still retains a specific capacity of about 2000 mAh g−1 after 100
cycles, which is more than five-times larger when it compared with graphite (372 mAh g−1). The obtained results confirm
that the new nanostructures are an excellent candidate for anode material in advanced lithium-ion batteries with enhanced
capacity and excellent columbic efficiency.

Keywords: Porous silicon flour,Bismuth  nanoparticles, Nickel nanoparticles, Lithium-ion battery, Anodic compounds