Manganese and Cobalt-Free Ultrahigh-Ni-Rich Single-Crystal Cathode for High-Performance Lithium Batteries
Adil Saleem, He Zhu, Muhammad K. Majeed, Rashid Iqbal, Bushra Jabar, Arshad Hussain, M. Zeeshan Ashfaq, Muhammad Ahmad, Sajid Rauf, Jean Pierre Mwizerwa, Jun Shen, Qi Liu
Abstract
Current commercial nickel (Ni)-rich Mn, Co, and Al-containing cathodes are employed in high-energy-density lithium (Li) batteries all around the globe. The presence of Mn/Co in them brings out several problems, such as high toxicity, high cost, severe transition-metal dissolution, and quick surface degradation. Herein, a Mn/Co-free ultrahigh-Ni-rich single-crystal LiNi 0.94 Fe 0.05 Cu 0.01 O 2 (SCNFCu) cathode with acceptable electrochemical performance is benchmarked against a Mn/Co-containing cathode. Despite having a slightly lower discharge capacity, the SCNFCu cathode retaining 77% of its capacity across 600 deep cycles in full-cell outperforms comparable to a high-Ni single-crystal LiNi 0.9 Mn 0.05 Co 0.05 O 2 (SCNMC; 66%) cathode. It is shown that the stabilizing ions Fe/Cu in the SCNFCu cathode reduce structural disintegration, undesirable side reactions with the electrolyte, transition-metal dissolution, and active Li loss. This discovery provides a new extent for cathode material development for next-generation high-energy, Mn/Co-free Li batteries due to the compositional tuning flexibility and quick scalability of SCNFCu, which is comparable to the SCNMC cathode.