Irregular micro-sized Li<inf>1.2</inf>Mn<inf>0.54</inf>Ni<inf>0.13</inf>Co<inf>0.13</inf>O<inf>2</inf>particles as cathode material with a high volumetric capacity for Li-ion batteries

© 2016 Elsevier B.V. A high tap density for cathode active material is desirable because it is beneficial to the improvement of volumetric energy density of Li-ion battery. However, a high tap density for lithium rich layered cathode material was hardly achieved because of the low tap density of spherical precursors with a loose packing of the plate-shaped long rectangular primary particles prepared by the conventional NH3-bearing co-precipitation method in atmosphere of flowing nitrogen. In this article, irregular Li1.2Mn0.54Ni0.13Co0.13O2particles with a high tap density were prepared using irregular precursors with a tight packing of the spherical primary particles synthesized by a NH3-free co-precipitation method in atmosphere of flowing air. The galvanostatic charge/discharge measurement indicates that the irregular Li1.2Mn0.54Ni0.13Co0.13O2particles possess a high gravimetric capacity of 259 mAh g−1and a volumetric capacity of 926 mAh cm−3. The superior electrochemical performance of as-prepared material can be attributed to that the irregular secondary particle have a large specific surface area and small pore volume detected by both nitrogen absorption method and mercury intrusion method and that the primary particle possesses more active planes exposure observed through HR-TEM images