UC Berkeley

There is an urgent need for low-cost, resource-friendly, high-energy-density cathode materials for lithium-ion batteries to satisfy the rapidly increasing need for electrical energy storage. To replace the nickel and cobalt, which are limited resources and are associated with safety problems, in current lithium-ion batteries, high-capacity cathodes based on manganese would be particularly desirable owing to the low cost and high abundance of the metal, and the intrinsic stability of the Mn⁴⁺ oxidation state. Here we present a strategy of combining high-valent cations and the partial substitution of fluorine for oxygen in a disordered-rocksalt structure to incorporate the reversible Mn²⁺/Mn⁴⁺ double redox couple into lithium-excess cathode materials. The lithium-rich cathodes thus produced have high capacity and energy density. The use of the Mn²⁺/Mn⁴⁺ redox reduces oxygen redox activity, thereby stabilizing the materials, and opens up new opportunities for the design of high-performance manganese-rich cathodes for advanced lithium-ion batteries.