Facile One-Step Solid-State Synthesis of Ni-Rich Layered Oxide Cathodes for Lithium-Ion Batteries

Abstract

Nickel-rich layered oxide is one of the dominate cathode materials in the lithium ion batteries, due to its high specific energy density meeting the range requirement of the electric vehicles. Typically, the commercial Ni-rich layered oxides are synthesized from co-precipitated precursors, while precision control is required in the co-precipitation process to ensure the atomic level mixing of the cations such as Ni, Co and Mn, et.al. In this work, a one-step solid-state method was successfully applied to synthesize the Ni-rich layered oxide materials with ultra-high Ni content. By choosing the nickel hydroxides as the precursor with layered structure similar to the targeting product, we successfully synthesized LiNiO₂ (LNO) and LiNi_xCo_yO₂(x = 0.85, 0.9, 0.95; x + y = 1) with the electrochemical performance comparable to NCM prepared from precipitated precursors. It was confirmed by XRD and XPS that Co is doped into LNO and suppresses the Li⁺/Ni²⁺ mixing in Ni-rich oxides. The Co dopant exhibits a noticeable advantage in improving the discharge capacity, rate performance and cycle performance. This work provides some perspective that the one-step solid-state method is a promising approach to prepare high-energy ultrahigh-Ni layered oxide cathodes.

Keywords

lithium-ion batteries / Ni-rich layered oxides / one-step solid-state method / LiNiO₂

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