Influence of ZnO coating on the structure, morphology and electrochemical performances for LiNi1/3Co1/3Mn1/3O2 material

In this paper, ZnO was applied to modify the surface of LiNi1/3Co1/3Mn1/3O2 cathode material by a simple method. Powder X-ray diffraction (XRD) results show that both of the pristine material and the modified material were well crystallized and closely similar to each other. The crystal parameters of pristine material increased by modified measure. Scan electron microscope (SEM) pictures exhibit that the quasispherical pristine material was modified to the squareness one. Transmission electron microscope (TEM) image clearly elucidates that ZnO (several nanometers to 20 nm) was successful coated on surface of LiNi1/3Co1/3Mn1/3O2. X-ray photo-electron spectrometry (XPS) is used to characterize the composite of the coating layer on the surface of modified material. Electrochemical performance results present that the ZnO coating layer decrease the initial capacities of LiNi1/3Co1/3Mn1/3O2 by increasing the surface layer resistances. However, the cycling performance of LiNi1/3Co1/3Mn1/3O2 was effectively improved by the ZnO coating layer.