Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, Vol.57, No.41, 13753-13758, 2018
Solventless Synthesis of Core-Shell LiFePO4/Carbon Composite for Lithium-Ion Battery Cathodes by Direct Pyrolysis of Coronene
LiFePO4 (LFP) as a cathode material for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) requires the application of carbon composite to compensate its poor electrical conductivity. Thus, it is important to develop an efficient and cost-effective carbon composite process. This work demonstrates a new carbon coating (CC) method involving the direct solventless pyrolysis of the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon coronene (C24H12) as a means of coating LFP powder. The electrochemical properties of the resulting LIB cathodes were examined to find that the CLFP cathode exhibited a high specific capacity of 154 mAh/g at 0.05 C, which corresponds to 91% of the theoretical capacity of LFP (170 mAh/g), and LIB cells with the CLFP cathode showed rate capabilities and cycling performance comparable to those of commercial LIB cells. Due to the simple CC process and the associated formation mechanism, we anticipate that this method will have practical applications in the large-scale manufacture of LFP for LIB cathodes with low cost.