Abstract

Silicon has been the most important material for the semiconductor industry since its emergence and Si is still the governing element in this field due to its superior carrier mobility, advanced standards of fabrication, as well as high abundance and limited toxicity (Liu et al. 2010). Nanostructured Si enables the extremely high transistor density in processors of modern electronic devices, and is frequently used for bio- or chemical sensors, and optoelectronics. One of the most popular fields of application is energy conversion, since about 90% of all photovoltaic cells are currently based on silicon (Peng et al. 2013). Further improvement of photovoltaic cells is, for example, promised by the use of Si nanowires (SiNWs). These SiNWs are not only employed in energy conversion, but also in energy storage applications, such as supercapacitors. In the following, however, we will discuss the use of coated SiNWs in lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), another type of electrical energy storage. Being the element with the highest known capacity for the storage of lithium ions, silicon shows the ability to improve energy storage dramatically and could therefore have a huge impact in future developments, since energy storage becomes more and more important on the global market (Gupta and Hawtin 2015).