Comparison of Al2O3- and AlPO4-coated LiCoO2 cathode materials for a Li-ion cell

The electrochemical and thermal properties of AlPO4-coated LiCoO2 were compared with those of the Al2O3-coated cathode. Even though cycling stability of the Al2O3-coated cathode was apparently similar to that of the AlPO4-coated sample at 4.6 V cycling, increasing the charge-cutoff voltage to 4.8 V led to the rapid capacity decay, exhibiting similar to 20% larger capacity-fading than the AlPO4-coated cathode. The irreversible capacity of the Al2O3-coated cathode (similar to 34 mAh g(-1)) was also larger than that of AlPO4-coated cathode (similar to 24 mAh g(-1)) at a charge-cutoff voltage of 4.8 V. This was attributed to the increase in the amount of Co dissolution into the electrolyte at higher voltage. Differential scanning calorimetry results showed that the overall exothermic-heat release of the Al2O3-coated cathode was similar to that of the bare cell, but the onset temperature of oxygen evolution from the cathode was increased to similar to 190 degrees C (up from similar to 170 degrees C in the bare cell). On the other hand, AlPO4-coated LiCoO2 Showed a much improved onset temperature of the oxygen evolution at similar to 230 degrees C, and a much lower amount of exothermic-heat release, compared to the Al2O3-coated sample. These results were correlated with the 12V overcharge experiments: the Li-ion cell containing AlPO4-coated LiCoO2 did not show a thermal runaway behavior in contrast to that containing bare, or Al2O3-coated cathode. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.