Hollow porous bowl-shaped lithium-rich cathode material for lithium-ion batteries with exceptional rate capability and stability

Although lithium-rich layered composite cathode materials can meet the requirements of high discharge capacities and energy densities of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), the drawbacks of encountering structural reconstruction, sharp voltage decay during cycling as well as low packing density still exist, which retard their further commercial development. This paper presents a novel approach to construct hollow porous bowl-shaped Li1.21Mn0.54Ni0.13Co0.13O2 (denoted as HPB-LMNCO) particles, which involves bowl-shaped carbonaceous particles as the predominant template and polyvinylpyrrolidone as an assistant soft template. One crucial step during the synthetic process is the controlled growth of metal ions with specific molar ratios in the bowl-shaped carbonaceous particles, and the key control parameter is the heating rate to ensure the prepared particles own the desired hollow porous bowl-shaped morphology. Of particular note is the desirable architecture which not only inherits the merits of hollow structures but also facilitates the tight particles packing. Owing to these advantages, utilizing this HPB-LMNCO as a cathode material manifests impressive rate capability and exceptional cycling stability at high rates with capacity retention of above 82% over 100 cycles. These results reveal that structural design of cathode materials play a pivotal role in developing high-performance LIBs.