High-Density Microporous Li₄Ti₅O₁₂ Microbars with Superior Rate Performance for Lithium-Ion Batteries

Abstract

Nanosized Li₄Ti₅O₁₂ (LTO) materials enabling high rate performance suffer from a large specific surface area and low tap density lowering the cycle life and practical energy density. Microsized LTO materials have high density which generally compromises their rate capability. Aiming at combining the favorable nano and micro size properties, a facile method to synthesize LTO microbars with micropores created by ammonium bicarbonate (NH₄HCO₃) as a template is presented. The compact LTO microbars are in situ grown by spinel LTO nanocrystals. The as-prepared LTO microbars have a very small specific surface area (6.11 m² g⁻¹) combined with a high ionic conductivity (5.53 × 10⁻¹² cm⁻² s⁻¹) and large tap densities (1.20 g cm⁻³), responsible for their exceptionally stable long-term cyclic performance and superior rate properties. The specific capacity reaches 141.0 and 129.3 mAh g⁻¹ at the current rate of 10 and 30 C, respectively. The capacity retention is as high as 94.0% and 83.3% after 500 and 1000 cycles at 10 C. This work demonstrates that, in situ creating micropores in microsized LTO using NH₄HCO₃ not only facilitates a high LTO tap density, to enhance the volumetric energy density, but also provides abundant Li-ion transportation channels enabling high rate performance.