Development of cathode materials for lithium ion rechargeable batteries based on the system Li(Ni1/3Mn1/3Co(1/3-x)Mx)O2, (M = Mg, Fe, Al and x = 0.00 to 0.33)

• The Pechini method was successfully used to synthesize doped NMC materials for LIB
• Phase pure Mg doped NMC materials (R-3m) were prepared by substituting Mg for Co
• Impurity phase, Ni6MnO8 (Fm3m) present in doped NMC materials was identified
• Substituting Mg and Fe for Co in NMC resulted in higher electrical conductivity
• Substituting Fe and Mg for 1/3 of Co in NMC resulted in materials comparable to LiCoO2

This study was based on developing Li(Ni1/3Mn1/3Co1/3-xMx)O2, (M = Mg, Fe, Al and x = 0 to 0.33) materials by substituting expensive Co content in this NMC system with cheaper Mg, Fe and Al additives for the cathode application in rechargeable lithium ion batteries (LIB). The Pechini method, which is a low-cost wet chemical technique, was used for powder synthesis in this study.The XRD phase analysis revealed the formation of solid solutions of appropriate layered Li(Ni1/3Co1/3Mn1/3)O2 phase of R-3m structure in the prepared compositions over x = 0.11 substitution of Fe and Mg. Furthermore, these Fe and Mg substituted compositions showed considerably higher electrical conductivity than the base material Li(Ni1/3Co1/3Mn1/3)O2 (over 0.9 × 10− 5 S/cm at 25 °C).In the cell studies, the Fe and Mg substituted compositions with x = 0.11 showed a specific capacity of 122 and 125 mAhg− 1, respectively, which are comparable to the specific capacity of the state-of-the-art LiCoO2 cathode material of LIB. Altogether, this study shows the ability of preparing these NMC materials by Pechini method with appropriate structural and electrochemical properties suitable for the LIB cathode.