Solvothermal Synthesis of Monodisperse LiFePO4 Micro Hollow Spheres as High Performance Cathode Material for Lithium Ion Batteries

A microspherical, hollow LiFePO4 (LFP) cathode material with polycrystal structure was simply synthesized by a solvothermal method using spherical Li3PO4 as the self-sacrificed template and FeCl2 center dot 4H(2)O as the Fe2+ source. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) show that the LFP micro hollow spheres have a quite uniform size of similar to 1 mu m consisting of aggregated nanoparticles. The influences of solvent and Fe2+ source on the phase and morphology of the final product were chiefly investigated, and a direct ion exchange reaction between spherical Li3PO4 templates and Fe2+ ions was firstly proposed on the basis of the X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) transformation of the products. The LFP nanoparticles in the micro hollow spheres could finely coat a uniform carbon layer similar to 3.5 nm by a glucose solution impregnating-drying-sintering process. The electrochemical measurements show that the carbon coated LFP materials could exhibit high charge-discharge capacities of 158, 144, 125, 101, and even 72 mAh g(-1) at 0.1, 1, 5, 20, and SO C, respectively. It could also maintain 80% of the initial discharge capacity after cycling for 2000 times at 20 C.