Mesoporous LiMnPO4/C nanoparticles as high performance cathode material for lithium ion batteries

LiMnPO4 has been considered as one of the most promising high voltage cathode materials for next-generation lithium ion batteries. However, LiMnPO4 suffers from intrinsic drawbacks of extremely low electronic conductivity and ionic diffusivity between LiMnPO4/MnPO4. In this paper, mesoporous LiMnPO4 nanoparticles are synthesized successfully via a facile glycine-assisted solvothermal rout. The as-prepared mesoporous LiMnPO4/C nanoparticles present well-defined abundant mesoporous structure (diameter of 3 ∼ 10 nm), uniform carbon layer (thickness of 3 ∼ 4 nm), high specific surface area (90.1 m2/g). As a result, the mesoporous LiMnPO4/C nanoparticles achieve excellent electrochemical performance as cathode materials for lithium ion batteries. It demonstrates a high discharge capacity of 167.7, 161.6, 156.4, 148.4 and 128.7 mAh/g at 0.1, 0.5, 1, 2 and 5C, and maintains a discharge capacity of 130.0 mAh/g after 100 cycles at 1C. The good electrochemical performance is attributed to its special interpenetrating mesoporous structure in LiMnPO4 nanoparticles, which significantly enhances the ionic and electronic transport and additional capacitive behavior to compensate the sluggish kinetics.