A liquid-phase mixing method is adopted to uniformly disperse the graphene nanosheets onto LiNi1/3Co1/3Mn1/3O2 cathode for high-performance Li-ion batteries (LIBs). The electrochemical performance was characterized using a full pouch cells with state-of-the-art electrode areal loading (compared to half coin cells). The addition of graphene sheets (i.e., only 1 wt%) significantly improves the high rate capability for charging and discharging operation. For example, 6 times improvement in 5 C charging was achieved providing further insights in enabling extreme fast charging for LIBs. Other benefits include longer cycleability, lower internal resistance, and higher lithium ion diffusion coefficient, demonstrated by charge-discharge cycling tests and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. Higher capacity retention of 88.2% and decreased internal resistance of similar to 0.9 Omega are observed after 400 cycles. The diffusion coefficient of Li ions is 6.49 x 10(8) cm(2) s(-1) when charged to 4.2 V, which is approximately 1.37 times higher compared to the configuration with no graphene sheet (4.74 x 10(8) cm(2) s(-1)). The improved performance is ascribed to a robust network among the active materials formed by graphene sheets, which serves as an extended current conductor and facilitates charge transfer, ionic reversibility, and ionic transportation. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.