Utilizing Environmental Friendly Iron as a Substitution Element in Spinel Structured Cathode Materials for Safer High Energy Lithium-Ion Batteries

Suppressing oxygen release from lithium ion battery cathodes during heating is a critical issue for the improvement of the battery safety characteristics because oxygen can exothermically react with the flammable electrolyte and cause thermal runaway. Previous studies have shown that oxygen release can be reduced by the migration of transition metal cations from octahedral sites to tetrahedral sites during heating. Such site-preferred migration is determined by the electronic structure of cations. Taking advantage of the unique electronic structure of the environmental friendly Fe, this is selected as substitution element in a high energy density material LiNi_0.5Mn_1.5O₄ to improve the thermal stability. The optimized LiNi_0.33Mn_1.33Fe_0.33O₄ material shows significantly improved thermal stability compared with the unsubstituted one, demonstrated by no observed oxygen release at temperatures as high as 500°C. Due to the electrochemical contribution of Fe, the high energy density feature of LiNi_0.5Mn_1.5O₄ is well preserved.