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Electrochemical properties of spinel Li4Ti5O12 nanoparticles prepared via a low-temperature solid route

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Abstract

Spinel phase Li4Ti5O12 (s-LTO) with an average primary particle size of 150 nm was synthesised via a solid state route by calcining a precursor mixture at 600 °C. The precursor was prepared from a stoichiometric mixture of TiO2 nanoparticles and an ethanolic solution of Li acetate and activated by ball-milling. Effects of the calcination temperature and atmosphere are examined in relation to the coexistence of impurity phases by X-ray diffraction and 6Li MAS NMR. The charge capacity of s-LTO, determined from cyclic voltammogram at a scan rate of 0.1 mV/s, was 142 mAh/g. The capacity of our optimised material is superior to that of commercially available spinel (a-LTO), despite the considerably smaller BET-specific surface area of the former. The superior properties of our material were also demonstrated by galvanostatic charging/discharging. From these observations, we conclude that the presented low-temperature solid state synthesis route provides LTO with improved electrochemical performance.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by V4-Japan Joint Research Program, Structure—function relationship of advanced monoxides for energy storage devices (AdOX) granted from Visegrad fund and Japan Science and Technology Agency. The partial financial support of VEGA (projects 2/0128/16, 2/0094/14 and 2/0064/14) and APVV (project 14-0103) is also acknowledged. The authors wish to thank to Dr. František Lofaj and Dr. Lenka Findoráková (Slovak Academy of Sciences, Slovakia) for Raman spectra and Dr. Angela Chemelli (TU Graz, Austria) for DLS experiments. M.W. would like to thank the Austrian Federal Ministry of Science, Research and Economy, and the National Foundation for Research, Technology and Development for the financial support. V.Š. thanks the support from DFG project (SE 1407/4-1). M.Z. acknowledges the financial support from the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic (15-06511S).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Geotechnics, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Kosice, Slovak Republic

    Mamoru Senna, Martin Fabián, Jaroslav Briančin, Erika Turianicová & Vladimír Šepelák

  2. Faculty of Science and Technology, Keio University, Yokohama, Japan

    Mamoru Senna

  3. J. Heyrovsky Institute of Physical Chemistry, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Praha, Czech Republic

    Ladislav Kavan & Markéta Zukalová

  4. Institute for Chemistry and Technology of Materials, Christian Doppler Laboratory for Lithium Batteries, Graz University of Technology, Graz, Austria

    Patrick Bottke & Martin Wilkening

  5. Institute of Nanotechnology, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Vladimír Šepelák

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  1. Mamoru Senna
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Correspondence to Mamoru Senna.

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Senna, M., Fabián, M., Kavan, L. et al. Electrochemical properties of spinel Li4Ti5O12 nanoparticles prepared via a low-temperature solid route. J Solid State Electrochem 20, 2673–2683 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10008-016-3272-x

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