Nickel-rich ternary cathode material as a novel capping layer to improve lithium iron phosphate electrochemical performance

We use a facile high-temperature solid-phase method to coat a layer of Ni-rich ternary material (LiNi0.8Co0.1Mn0.1O2) on the surface of lithium iron phosphate. This active coating greatly improves the intrinsic conductivity of LiFePO4. Compared to the conventional carbon material cladding, since this cladding layer is electrochemically active, the problem of decreasing the proportion of active material due to the addition of a cladding layer can be avoided to a certain extent. Compared with the samples capped with conventional organic carbon source (151.2 mAh g−1) and inorganic carbon source (155.9 mAh g−1) at 0.2C, the discharge specific capacity was as high as 165.7 mAh g−1. Capacity retention after 200 cycles is up to 98%, which is much higher than that of glucose and graphene oxide (GO)-coated samples (95.9%, 96.6%). Even when charging and discharging cycles are performed at different multipliers (2C and 10C), the retention rate remains higher than the latter.