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A lithium ion battery system has been known as one of the most promising energy storage devices to address the energy crisis owing to its high energy density, high voltage and long cycling life. For the applications of electric vehicles (EVs) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs), lithium ion batteries (LIBs) are required with high reversible capacities at high cutoff potentials and good cycling stabilities. Currently, the commercial LiCoO2 cathode may not satisfy the requirements of EVs and HEVs. Because of integrating the advantages of LiCoO2, LiNiO2 and LiMnO2, the LiNixCoyMn1−x−yO2 cathode material has been an available candidate to build high performance LIBs.
To promote the lithium ion storage performance of LiNi1−x−yCoxMnyO2, many kinds of LiNi1−x−yCoxMnyO2 materials with different ratios of Ni, Co and Mn have been studied[1-4]. As a type of nickel-rich LiNixCoyMn1−x−yO2 (x>0.5) materials, LiNi0.6Co0.2Mn0.2O2 has attracted a lot of attention for its high reversible capacity. However, the dissolution of Ni, Co and Mn ions into the electrolyte occurs upon cycling, causing severe structural damages and degradations of the material stabilities[5-9]. Furthermore, it was demonstrated in a number of studies[10-12] that a high cutoff potential can lead to a high energy density, but an aggravating dissolution of active ions, especially at potentials above 4.3 V.
To address these challenges, a modification of LiNixCoyMn1−x−yO2 cathode is demanded. And a great deal of strategies have been tried to improve the properties of LiNixCoyMn1−x−yO2 cathodes, such as ion doping[13-17], surface coating[1, 4, 18-19], surface reconstruction[20-22], size and shape control[23-25]. Among these methods, surface coating with metal oxides has been verified to be efficient in improving the cathode electrochemical performances, such as Al2O3[26-30], MgO[31-35], TiO2[36-38] and ZnO[39-41]. Due to the hexagonal structure of MgO, a MgO coating layer has negligible effect on Li ion transition[35]. Moreover, the Mg2+ ions can diffuse into the interslab space under the pillaring effect with enhancing the structural stability[42-44]. As a result, the MgO coating shows unique advantages comparing with the other metal oxides. To promote the performances of LiNi0.6Co0.2Mn0.2O2 cathodes, moreover, it is essential to obtain a conformal and ultrathin MgO coating layer. But it is of difficulty for the traditional methods, such as sol-gel and wet chemical methods, to produce an ultrathin layer onto the LiNi0.6Co0.2Mn0.2O2. Therefore, how to design an ultrathin MgO coating onto LiNi0.6Co0.2Mn0.2O2 has still been challenging.
Fortunately, an atomic layer deposition (ALD) as an advanced coating method can conveniently synthesize ultrathin films on many kinds of materials[45-49]. The thicknesses of coating layers can be precisely controlled by regulating numbers of deposition reactions. Moreover, our previous results indicated that the electrode modification can well maintain the conductivity network, differing from the powder coating[28, 50]. Interestingly, the whole electrode modification is easy to conduct via ALD, which is challenging for the traditional methods.
In this work, LiNi0.6Co0.2Mn0.2O2 cathodes coated with ultrathin MgO layer were successfully designed. Remarkably, the electrochemical performances of LiNi0.6Co0.2Mn0.2O2 were much improved due to the effective protection of MgO coating from the electrolyte.
Atomic Layer Deposition of Ultrathin MgO Coating onto LiNi0.6Co0.2Mn0.2O2
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摘要: LiNi0.6Co0.2Mn0.2O2 锂离子电池正极材料由于其较高的能量密度和容量密度获得了广泛的关注。但是这一材料在较高的截止电压下,循环寿命难以令人满意。针对这一问题,该文提出了利用原子层沉积的方法在其表面包覆氧化镁薄膜以改善其高电压下的循环稳定性。研究表明,在4.5 V和4.7 V的截止电压下,该材料的循环性能和倍率性能均获得了较大的提高。相比于原始材料,经过100个循环,在4.7 V的截止电压下,改性后的材料的容量仍可达到158 mAh·g−1。Abstract: As one of the most promising cathode materials for high energy density lithium ion batteries, LiNi0.6Co0.2Mn0.2O2 with high reversible capacity suffers poor cycling performances, especially at high cutoff potentials. To address this challenge, in this study, an atomic layer deposition is utilized to design controllable MgO coating layers onto LiNi0.6Co0.2Mn0.2O2 cathode material. It is confirmed that the optimized LiNi0.6Co0.2Mn0.2O2 cathode shows an improved electrochemical performance comparing with the pristine material at the cutoff potentials of 4.5 V as well as 4.7 V. After 100 cycles, the LiNi0.6Co0.2Mn0.2O2 with MgO coating displays the reversible capacities of 157 mAh·g−1 and 158 mAh·g−1 at the cutoff potential of 4.5 V and 4.7 V, respectively, which is higher than those of the pristine one (131 mAh·g−1 and 144 mAh·g−1). This study demonstrates that the ALD derived MgO coating layer shows some promising potentials to improve LiNi0.6Co0.2Mn0.2O2 performance for lithium ion batteries. This is mainly due to the effective protection of MgO layer to the material surface, that is, the MgO coating can stabilize the interface and block the metal ion dissolution by reducing the direct connection between LiNi0.6Co0.2Mn0.2O2 and electrolyte.
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Key words:
- atomic layer deposition /
- MgO film /
- lithium ion battery cathode material
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