Surface Chemical Analysis of Solid-Electrolyte Interphase Layer on Germanium Thin Films and the Effect of Vinylene Carbonate Electrolyte Additive

Germanium thin-film anodes for Li-ion battery applications are the focus of the present work. As part of this chapter, we shall briefly review the use of germanium thin films in Li-ion batteries, and subsequently, new results pertaining to the effect of vinylene carbonate (VC) as electrolyte additive on the electrochemical performance are presented. We have used cyclic voltammetry, galvanostatic charge-discharge and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy to investigate the performance. Thin-film electrode performance with 0 wt. %, 5 wt. %, and 10 wt.% VC as electrolyte additive was compared to understand the role of additive’s concentration. The cell with 5 wt.% VC as electrolyte additive exhibited best performance with high specific capacity of 975 mAh/g, with a retention of 94 and 99% Coulombic efficiency at the end of 100 cycles. Ex situ surface chemical analysis of the solid-electrolyte interphase (SEI) layer has been studied in detail using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and correlated with the electrochemical performance