Nb₂O₅ Coating to Improve the Cyclic Stability and Voltage Decay of Li-Rich Cathode Material for Lithium-Ion Battery

Abstract

The commercialization of lithium manganese oxide (LMO) is seriously hindered by several drawbacks, such as low initial Coulombic efficiency, the degradation of the voltage and capacity during cycling, and the poor rating performance. Developing a simple and scalable synthesis for engineering with surface coating layers is significant and challenging for the commercial prospects of LMO oxides. Herein, we have proposed an efficient engineering strategy with a Nb2O5 coating layer. We dissolved niobate (V) ammonium oxalate hydrate and stoichiometric rich LMO (RLM) in deionized water and stirred constantly. Then, the target product was calcined at high temperature. The discharge capacity of the Nb2O5 coating RLM is increased from 195 mAh·g−1 (the RLM without Nb2O5) to 215 mAh·g−1 at a coating volume ratio of 0.010. The average voltage decay was 4.38 mV/cycle, which was far lower than the 7.50 mV/cycle for the pure LMO. The electrochemical kinetics results indicated that the performance was superior with the buffer engineering by the Nb2O5 coating of RLM, which provided an excellent lithium-ion conduction channel, and improved diffusion kinetics, capacity fading, and voltage decay. This reveals the strong potential of the Nb2O5 coating in the field of cathode materials for lithium-ion batteries.

Keywords

• Li-ion batteries
• Li- and Mn-rich layered oxide cathodes
• Nb₂O₅ coating
• capacity
• voltage decay