Investigation of various layered lithium ion battery cathode materials by plasma- and X-ray-based element analytical techniques.

In this work, the transition metal dissolution (TMD) from the respective ternary layered LiMO (M = Mn, Co, Ni, Al) cathode active material was investigated as well as the lithiation degrees of the cathodes after charge/discharge cyclic aging. Furthermore, increased nickel contents in LiNiCoMnO-based (NCM) cathode materials were studied, to elucidate their influence on capacity fading and TMD. It was found, that the TMD from nickel-rich cathode materials, e.g., LiNiCoMnO or LiNiCoMnO, did not differ significantly from the TMD from the stoichiometric LiNiCoMnO. In detail, the TMD from the cathode did not exceed a maximum of 0.2 wt% and was uniformly distributed on all analyzed cell parts (separator, anode, and electrolyte) using total reflection X-ray fluorescence. Moreover, the investigated electrolyte solutions showed that increased Ni contents come with more nickel dissolution of the respective material. Additionally, inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy analysis on the respective charge/discharge cyclic-aged cathode active materials revealed lithium losses of 20% after 50 cycles. However, only a minimum amount of capacity loss (= 1.5 mAh g) can be attributed to active material loss.