Restricted growth of LiMnPO4 nanoparticles evolved from a precursor seed

Herein, we report on a novel precipitation method to enable LiMnPO4 olivine (LMP) as a cathode material for lithium ion batteries (LIBs) to reach high capacity at high discharge rates. By confining Mn-3(PO4)(2) precipitation on surface of a precursor seed of Li3PO4, the size of LMP particles is limited to less than 100 nm for a smaller dimension. The cathode material delivers discharge capacities of 145 mAh g(-1) at 0.1 C. 112 mAh g(-1) at 1 C to 62 mAh g(-1) at 5 C (comparable with top three performances [1-3]). Even if precipitation is one of the versatile strategies to prepare the cathode material, it has not been reported that such a first-tier high performance is obtained from LMP prepared by precipitation methods. When compared with LMP particles synthesized by a conventional co-precipitation method, the performances are recognized to be considerably enhanced. Also, the surface-confined precipitation process described in this work does not involve a ball milling step with a conductive agent such as carbon black [1,2,4-10] so that a low cost synthesis is feasible. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.