General Strategy for Designing Core-Shell Nanostructured Materials for High-Power Lithium Ion Batteries

Because of its extreme safety and outstanding cycle life, Li4Ti5O12 has been regarded as one of the most promising anode materials for next generation high power lithium ion batteries. Nevertheless, Li4Ti5O12 suffers from poor electronic conductivity. Here, we develop a novel strategy for the fabrication of Li4Ti5O12/carbon core-shell electrodes using metal, oxyacetyl acetonate as titania and single-source carbon: Importantly, this novel approach is simple and general with which we have successfully produce nanosized particles of an olivine type LiMPO4 (M = Fe, Mn, and Co) core with a uniform carbon shell, one of the leading: cathode materials for lithium ion batteries. Metal acetylacetonates decompose with carbon coating the particles, which is followed by a solid state reaction in the limited reaction area inside the carbon shell to produce the LTO/C (LMPO4/C) core-shell nanostructure. The optimum design of the core-shell nanostructures permits fast kinetics for both transported Li+ ions and enabling high-power performance.