Structural and electrochemical characterization of LiFePO4 synthesized by an HEDP-based soft-chemistry route

High performance LiFePO4 cathode material was synthesized by an HEDP-based soft-chemistry method, followed by calcination at 700 °C for 5 h in Ar. The synthesized LiFePO4 was characterized by XRD, SEM techniques. The results showed that the LiFePO4 powder has good crystallinity and the diameter of the powder ranges form 50–300 nm. The electrochemical performance of the LiFePO4 by galvanostatic cycling studies demonstrated excellent high rate cycle stability. What noticeable is that the material has very flat voltage plateaus and the voltage difference is only about 0.3 V between the plateaus of charge and discharge even at a high rate of 10 C. This suggests excellent transport properties of the sample leading to a minimized kinetic polarization.