Polyol technique synthesis of Nb2O5 coated on LiFePO4 cathode materials for Li-ion storage

A novel approach has been made to tailor Niobium pentoxide (Nb2O5) as a coating material on the surface of lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4) via a facile polyol technique. The coating content was optimized at 1 wt%. The superficial coating demonstrated superior discharge capacity than the pristine LiFePO4. However, increasing the coating content further would result in a capacity loss. This may be due to the electrochemical inactiveness that increases with the content of the coating material, and 1 wt% of Nb2O5-coated LiFePO4 sample exhibits initial discharge capacity of 163 mAh g(-1) at a current of 0.1 C and retains a stable discharge capacity of 143 mAh g(-1) up to 400 cycles at 1 C rate with a coulombic efficiency of 98%.