Tuning Particle Morphology of Lithium-Ion Battery Electrode Particles

Improving energy density and performance of lithium-ion battery electrodes is highly dependent on improvements in electrode and electrolyte chemistry, however, the morphology of the active materials also can play a major role.  Particle morphology has a major impact on factors such as the packing of particles into electrodes and the relative amount of surface area exposed to the electrolyte per mass of material.  In this presentation, we will describe our current efforts to synthesize lithium-ion battery electrode particles that are relatively monodisperse and have tunable overall shape and surface morphology.  Our group is taking advantage of inorganic solution chemistry methods and understanding particle nucleation and growth to control the final resulting particle morphology that will eventually serve as lithium-ion battery active materials.  This work will focus on our first efforts investigating a model system for building a library of particle morphologies for a single battery chemistry, in this case LiMn₂O₄.