Stabilizing the Structure of Nickel‐Rich Lithiated Oxides via Cr Doping as Cathode with Boosted High‐Voltage/Temperature Cycling Performance for Li‐Ion Battery
Structural degradation is a crucial issue, accounting for capacity fading and safety concerns of Ni‐rich cathodes, especially at high temperature and high cutoff cell potential. Herein, Cr 3+ is used as a dopant to stabilize the structure, as well as enhance the cycling life, of LiNi 0.6 Co 0.2 Mn 0.2 O 2 . The effective bulk Cr 3+ doping is confirmed via various analysis characterizations. Results demonstrate that a moderate amount of Cr 3+ can not only expand pathways for Li‐ion insertion and extraction, but also suppress cation mixing. Electrochemical test results show that the electrochemical performance of the moderate amount of Cr 3+ ‐doped material is remarkably improved, especially under harsh conditions. In the cell potential range of 2.7–4.3 V, the 1 mol% Cr‐doped LiNi 0.6 Co 0.2 Mn 0.2 O 2 exhibits 100.6 g −1 after 200 cycles at 10 C, corresponding to 93.1% of the initial cycle. In the cell potential range of 2.7–4.5 V, the cathode still exhibits 166.8 mAh g −1 and keeps 75.0% of the initial value at the 200th cycle at 3 C and 50 °C, whereas the discharge capacity of pristine LiNi 0.6 Co 0.2 Mn 0.2 O 2 quickly decreases to 31.5 mAh g −1 .