One-Spot Facile Synthesis of Single-Crystal LiNiCoMnO Cathode Materials for Li-ion Batteries.

The layered lithium-metal oxides are promising cathode materials for Li-ion batteries. Nevertheless, their widespread applications have been limited by the high cost, complex process, and poor stability resulting from the Ni/Li mixing. Hence, we have developed a facile one-spot method combining glucose and urea to form a deep eutectic solvent, which could lead to the homogeneous distribution and uniform mixing of transition-metal ions at the atomic level. LiNiCoMnO (NCM523) polyhedron with high homogeneity could be obtained through in situ chelating Ni, Co, and Mn by the amid groups. The prepared material exhibits a relatively high initial electrochemical property, which is due to the unique single-crystal hierarchical porous nano/microstructure, the polyhedron with exposed active surfaces, and the negligible Ni/Li mixing level. This one-spot approach could be expanded to manufacture other hybrid transition-metal-based cathode materials for batteries.