Lithium-Rich Cobalt-Free Manganese-Based Layered Cathode Materials for Li-Ion Batteries: Suppressing the Voltage Fading

Lithium-rich layered oxides are recognized as promising materials for Li-ion batteries, owing to higher capacity than the currently available commercialized cathode, for their lower cost. However, their voltage decay and cycling instability during the charge/discharge process are problems that need to be solved before their practical application can be envisioned. These problems are mainly associated with a phase transition of the surface layer from the layered structure to the spinel structure. In this paper, we report the AlF3-coating of the Li-rich Co-free layered Li1.2Ni0.2Mn0.6O2 (LLNMO) oxide as an effective strategy to solve these problems. The samples were synthesized via the hydrothermal route that insures a very good crystallization in the layered structure, probed by XRD, energy-dispersive X-ray (EDX) spectroscopy, and Raman spectroscopy. The hydrothermally synthesized samples before and after AlF3 coating are well crystallized in the layered structure with particle sizes of about 180 nm (crystallites of ~65 nm), with high porosity (pore size 5 nm) determined by Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) specific surface area method. Subsequent improvements in discharge capacity are obtained with a ~5-nm thick coating layer. AlF3-coated Li1.2Ni0.2Mn0.6O2 delivers a capacity of 248 mAh g−1 stable over the 100 cycles, and it exhibits a voltage fading rate of 1.40 mV per cycle. According to the analysis from galvanostatic charge-discharge and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, the electrochemical performance enhancement is discussed and compared with literature data. Post-mortem analysis confirms that the AlF3 coating is a very efficient surface modification to improve the stability of the layered phase of the Li-rich material, at the origin of the significant improvement of the electrochemical properties.