Scientists at the Berkeley National Laboratory in California, US, say they have found a way to make cathodes that have the potential to increase energy density in lithium batteries.
In collaboration with scientists from two labs at the Department of Energy (DOE), the team found a technique called ‘spray pyrolysis’ could help overcome a major problem with surface reactivity in nickel manganese cobalt oxide (NMC) cathodes, which leads to material degradation.
“We made some regular material using this technique, and lo and behold, it performed better than expected,” said lab scientist Marca Doeff, who has been studying NMC cathodes for about seven years.
“We used advanced imaging techniques to find that there was less nickel on the particle surfaces, which is what led to the improvement. High nickel content is associated with greater surface reactivity.”
Their results were published online in the premier issue of the journal Nature Energy in an article called, “Metal segregation in hierarchically structured cathode materials for high-energy lithium batteries”.
Spray pyrolysis is a commercially available technique used for making thin films and powders, but it has not yet been widely used to make materials for battery production.
