Rice husks as a sustainable source of high quality nanostructured silica for high performance Li-ion battery requital by sol-gel method - a review

The electronics industry is heavily reliant on the use of silicon in devices ranging from solar panels to circuitry. This is of growing concern due to the environmental impact of sourcing and refining the material. Thus, a green source of silicon is of vital importance to meet the growing demand for silicon in the industry. Rice husk represents an abundant source of nano silica. Currently the husk is considered a waste product that is separated from the grain during the milling process. Several methods have been trailed to extract the nano silica from rice husk. This paper reviews these current methods and presents suggestions of innovative research directions for processing techniques. This work reveals that the structural nature of superfine silica from rice husk ash is independent of the purification method, but dependent on the incineration temperature used. The paper concludes by advocating the physic-chemical process for producing high purity reactive nanosilica from rice husk. This method has the advantage of having high volume production versatility and being environmentally friendly. However, control of the morphology, shape, size, crystalline structure and chemical composition of rice husk nanostructures remains a challenge in the development of 3D nanopores arrays controllable by synthesis methods. We hope this article can provide the reader with snapshots of the recent development and future challenges.