A composite electrode based on sub-micrometric iron metal and lithium fluoride

In this paper a general method to obtain a mixture of a transition metal embedded in a matrix of lithium fluoride is proposed. The method consists in the reduction of the oxide of the transition metal with lithium hydride to form the correspondent transition metal and lithium oxide. This latter is then converted into lithium fluoride by solid state reaction with ammonium fluoride. In this work the proposed method was applied to iron(III) oxide to obtain a mixture of iron metal and lithium fluoride. The crystal structure and phase purity of the intermediate as well as the final product were analyzed by X-ray diffraction measurement and the crystallite dimensions evaluated by using the Scherrer's formula. The iron metal/lithium fluoride mixture was used as a conversion material and its electrochemical properties evaluated by galvanostatic charge discharge cycles, impedance spectroscopy and galvanostatic intermittent titration technique. As the conversion material is in its reduced state it can be coupled with a carbonaceous negative electrode to build a lithium ion battery, opening new perspectives for using conversion materials in lithium ion batteries technology.