Enhancing Electrocatalysis of LiNi0.5Co0.2Mn0.3O2 by Introducing Lithium Deficiency for Oxygen Evolution Reaction

LiNi0.5Co0.2Mn0.3O2 (NCM523), as a cathode material for rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, has attracted considerable attention and been successfully commercialized for decades. NCM is also a promising electrocatalyst for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER), and the catalytic activity is highly correlated to its structure. In this paper, we successfully obtain NCM523 with three different structures: spinel NCM synthesized at low temperature (LT-NCM), disordered NCM (DO-NCM) with lithium deficiency obtained at high temperature and layered hexagonal NCM at high temperature (HT-NCM). By introducing lithium deficiency to tune the valence state of transition metals in NCM from Ni2+ to Ni3+, DO-NCM exhibits the best catalytic activity with respect to the lowest onset potential (~1.48 V) and Tafel slope (~85.6 mV dec-1), whereas HT-NCM exhibits the worst catalytic activity with the highest onset potential (~1.63 V) and Tafel slope (~241.8 mV dec-1).