Improvement of electrochemical performance of Li1.96Mg0.02MnO3 by surface treatment

As a prospective cathode material, the main shortages of Li2MnO3 are its low practical capacity and poor cycling stability. Here, an electrochemically stable and low-cost nickel nitrate surface treatment of Li1.96Mg0.02MnO3 cathode material is prepared by solid-state reaction. The advantage of this material lies in Mg2+ ions playing a key role in improving the discharge capacities by larger amount of Li+ extracted and inserted through Li vacancies. Meanwhile, nickel containing layered oxide coating layer serves as the protector to suppress the dissolution of manganese as well as stabilizing the layer structure. As a result, this cathode delivered a superior discharge capacity of 177.4 mAh g−1 after 40 cycles at 0.1C, which was approximately 57.8% higher than that of pristine Li2MnO3. After comparison, it presented an optimal rate performance at different C rate. Therefore, surface treatment will bring Li1.96Mg0.02MnO3 a bright future at the race of cathode development for lithium ion batteries.