Extreme Fast Charging and Stable Cycling of Lithium Manganese Oxide Batteries by Suppression of Cathode Phase Changes

Abstract

Extreme fast charging (XFC, i.e., 80% state of charge within 15 min, 4C rate) remains a high-desirability criterion for next-generation lithium batteries. While the anodes, such as, graphite and lithium are historically acknowledged as the critical hurdles toward XFC of Li-ion batteries, the stability of cathodes under such sustained high rate cycling has not been addressed in literature. In this work, for the first time, the XFC and 4C cycling of cobalt-free LiMn2O4 (LMO) batteries with practical areal capacity (1 mAh cm−2) are investigated. This work demonstrates that the high rate cycling of LMO brings forth a cascade of irreversible phase changes in the bulk of the cathode, which initiat..