Director, Stanford Precourt Institute for Energy, Professor at Stanford University, Co-founder of Mitra Chem
A systematic study of Li- and Mn-rich NMC calcination pathway Grace Busse and colleagues have published a systematic study of the calcination pathway of LMR-NMC, a promising high-energy density and sustainable cathode-active material for lithium-ion batteries. During calcination, transition-metal precursors react with lithium sources to generate the final cathode powder. ✅ We combined operando and ex-situ X-ray diffraction, absorption spectroscopy, and microscopy to understand the evolution of the crystal structure, oxidation states and microstructure during thermal treatment. ✅ We demonstrated that Li2CO3 particle size dramatically affects the synthesis pathway and transient heterogeneity due to the non-uniform solid-solid reaction between the lithium and transition-metal sources. These heterogeneities exist at both the inter- and intra-secondary particle length scales. ✅ There has been confusion in the literature on whether or not Li2CO3 melting is an intrinsic feature of LMR-NMC synthesis. We showed that, with proper size control, Li2CO3 fully reacts with the transition-metal precursor before reaching the melting point of Li2CO3. Therefore, the melting feature observed in thermogravimetry is not general and reflects inadqueete Li2CO3 size control. Links to the pre-print and published paper are below. Peter Csernica, Kipil Lim, Jeonghwa Lee, Zhelong Jiang, Diego Rivera, Young Jin Kim, and David Shapiro contributed to the work. William Gent and I supervised the work. The work was funded by BASF and in part by the Office of Naval Research.
Very important and interesting study.
Excellent work Grace!! This really sets the standard for in-situ synthesis studies and shows the importance of controlling all relevant variables, especially those often overlooked!
Incredibly comprehensive work! A truly impressive level of depth and mechanistic insight.
Congratulations Grace and team on a deep exploration of Li and Mn rich cathode synthesis! Many years of effort distilled into a very insightful body of work.
Congratulation Grace! I'm always impressed by the attention to detail and thoroughness of your studies 😃
Congratulations to Grace and the rest of the team! This is fascinating and incredibly rigorous work!
Congrats Grace and the rest of the team on a very thorough and insightful piece of work!
Really excellent, rigorous work! Congratulations to Grace and coauthors!
Director, Stanford Precourt Institute for Energy, Professor at Stanford University, Co-founder of Mitra Chem
1yPublished article: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.chemmater.3c02404 Preprint: https://chemrxiv.org/engage/chemrxiv/article-details/65245e2a45aaa5fdbb9ff36a