Effect of compaction pressure on electrochemical performance of layered lithium-rich oxide

Lithium-rich oxide cathode material focuses the attention of many researchers due to its excellent electrochemical performance for lithium-ion batteries. Further improvement on the performance with a strong operability approach can be beneficial to its industrialization and commercialization. In this work, the effect of powder compaction pressure in sintering process on the electrochemical performance of Li1.2Mn0.54Ni0.13Co0.13O(2) cathode material is investigated. Four cathode materials under different powder compaction pressure are synthesized by sol-gel method. The XRD analysis results reveal their consistency on the crystal structure. But there is a slight difference on particle size and microstructure found by SEM analysis. Electrochemical tests show that a cathode material under medium compaction pressure exhibits the best performance with a discharge capacity of 170.3 mAh.g-1 at the rate of 200 mA.g-1 with 89.35% retention after 100 cycles. This work reveals that the powder compaction pressure does have influence on the cycle and rate performance and this relation is not proportional and linear.