The nature of the nonmetal–metal transition in LixCoO2 oxide

•Transport properties studies of LixCoO2 reported in 0.53 ≤ x ≤ 1 range.•Increase of the electrical conductivity by the factor of 106.•Strong decrease of EA of σ realized in hex-I single phase region.•Electronic transport correlated with NEXAFS results and DOS calculations.•Nonmetal–metal transition interpreted as Anderson-type transition.

In this paper we analyze the nature of the nonmetal–metal transition in the LixCoO2 oxide (0.53 ≤ x ≤ 1) on the basis on the investigations of the structural, transport properties, oxygen K-edge NEXAFS spectroscopy and calculated density of states (DOS). Our investigations show that the stoichiometric Li1CoO2 oxide is a semiconductor, but extraction of the lithium ions leads to the metallic properties of the system. Besides, KKR-CPA showed that the distortion of the oxygen octahedron significantly modifies top valence states. We postulate that the nonmetal–metal transition can be interpreted on the basis on the Anderson type transition.