Pressure effect on the structural, electronic, and magnetic properties of the battery cathode material LiMn2O4: An ab-initio study

LiMn2O4 is a battery cathode material with desirable properties such as low cost, low toxicity, high natural abundance of Mn, and environmental compatibility. By means of first-principles calculations, we study the structural, magnetic, and electronic properties of LiMn2O4 under ambient conditions and high hydrostatic pressures (until 20 GPa). We obtain two oxidation states for Mn, even using a cubic structure, which differ in all analyzed properties: structural, electronic, and magnetic. At P > 0, such properties were found to display a standard behavior decreasing smoothly and linearly with pressure. Furthermore, the enthalpy of cubic and orthorhombic structures under low and high-pressure conditions were examined, showing that no cubic to orthorhombic phase transition exists in all the investigated pressure range, nor is a magnetic cubic to a non-magnetic cubic phase transition possible.