Mass production of Li 4 Ti 5 O 12 with a conductive network via in situ spray pyrolysis as a long cycle life, high rate anode material for lithium ion batteries

• Published in: RSC advances 2014, Vol.4 (73), p.38568-38574
• Main Authors: Du, Guodong, Winton, Brad R., Hashim, Israa M., Sharma, Neeraj, Konstantinov, Konstantin, Reddy, M. V., Guo, Zaiping
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 2046-2069; 2046-2069
• DOI: 10.1039/C4RA05178E

Nanocrystalline Li 4 Ti 5 O 12 with in situ incorporation of carbon and Ti 3+ was synthesized by industry scalable in situ spray pyrolysis, producing crystal sizes ranging from 10 to 30 nm. Subsequent annealing in N 2 preserved a proportion of the carbon from the precursor organic salts, predominantly on the Li 4 Ti 5 O 12 grain boundaries, where it formed a conductive network. Such a situation would be expected to inhibit the growth of the primary Li 4 Ti 5 O 12 crystals. The molecular-level uniformity of the precursor allows synthesis of Li 4 Ti 5 O 12 with a significantly shorter heat treatment compared to conventional solid state reaction, which in turn saves energy during large-scale production. Notably, both the nanosized particles and the in situ incorporation of carbon and Ti 3+ improve the rate capability. In rate capability measurements, stable and high capacity retention was observed from 0.5 C to 30 C. Spray pyrolyzed Li 4 Ti 5 O 12 delivered a discharge capacity of 145.8 mA h g −1 at 10 C for up to 500 cycles. In the full battery tests with Li(Co 0.16 Mn 1.84 )O 4 as cathode, it also showed excellent capacity and cycling stability, further indicating that spray pyrolyzed Li 4 Ti 5 O 12 is a promising anode material for high power batteries.