Coral-shaped porous LiFePO4/graphene hybrids for high rate and all-climate battery applications

Tailor-designed cathode materials are essential for Li-ion batteries with both high energy density and outstanding capacity retention. Here we have designed and fabricated coral-shaped hierarchical porous LiFePO4/graphene hybrids for lithium-ion batteries. These novel hybrid materials exhibit excellent electrochemical performance over a wide temperature range from -40 degrees C to +60 degrees C. Even at -40 degrees C, the hybrid cathode can deliver a high initial capacity of 120 mAhg(-1) and still maintain a discharge capacity of 80 mAhg(-1) after 500 cycles with a very low capacity loss of 0.066% per cycle. The excellent wide-temperature performance can be ascribed to the porous structure and fast ion/electronic transport kinetics of the high conductive framework.