Effect of annealing temperature on structure and electrochemical properties of LiCoO2 cathode thin films

LiCoO2 thin films, which can be used as a cathode material in microbatteries, were deposited using radio frequency (r.f.) magnetron sputtering system from a LiCoO2 target and in an O2 + Ar atmosphere. The films were characterized by various methods such as XRD, SEM and AFM. The LiCoO2 films were annealed in air at 300, 500, 700 and 800 °C respectively. The effect of the annealing temperature on the structure, the surface morphology and the electrochemical properties of the films were investigated. The LiCoO2 thin film deposited at room temperature is amorphous and has smaller grain size. With increasing of annealing temperature, the crystallinity of the films is promoted. When the annealing temperature increases to 700 °C, the films have a perfect crystalline LiCoO2 phase. The LiCoO2 thin film without annealing has no discharge plateau and small discharge capacity (about 27 μAh·cm−2μm). The discharge capacity increases with the increasing of annealing temperature and reaches 47 μAh · cm−2μm for the film annealed with 700 °C, which also shows the typical discharge plateau of 3.9 V. The cycle performance of LiCoO2 thin films of as grown and annealed at different temperatures were studied. In the case of the film without thermal treatment, the capacity fading is much faster than that of the film annealed at different temperature, showing about 40% capacity loss only after 25 cycles. However, in the case of the film annealed at 700 °C, the capacity reaches to steady state gradually and maintained constantly with cycling. After 25 times cycling, the discharge capacity of the film annealed at 700 °C decreases to about 36.9 μAh·cm−2·μm, only 0.8% capacity loss per cycle.