Template-Assisted Hydrothermal Synthesis of Li₂MnSiO₄ as a Cathode Material for Lithium Ion Batteries

Lithium manganese silicate (Li2MnSiO4) is an attractive cathode material with a potential capacity above 300 mA h g(-1) if both lithium ions can be extracted reversibly. Two drawbacks of low electronic conductivity and structural collapse could be overcome by a conductive surface coating and a porous structure. Porous morphology with inner mesopores offers larger surface area and shorter ions diffusion pathways and also buffers the volume changes during lithium insertion and extraction. In this paper, mesoporous Li2MnSiO4 (M-Li2MnSiO4) prepared using MCM-41 as template through a hydrothermal route is compared to a sample of bulk Li2MnSiO4 (B-Li2MnSiO4) using silica as template under the same conditions. Also, in situ carbon coating technique was used to improve the electronic conductivity of M-Li2MnSiO4. The physical properties of these cathode materials were further characterized by SEM, XRD, FTIR, and N2 adsorption-desorption. It is shown that M-Li2MnSiO4 exhibits porous structure with pore sizes distributed in the range 9-12 nm, and when used as cathode electrode material, M-Li2MnSiO4 exhibits enhanced specific discharge capacity of 193 mA h g(-1) at a constant current of 20 mA g(-1) compared with 120.1 mA h g(-1) of B-Li2MnSiO4. This is attributed to the porous structure which allows the electrolyte to penetrate into the particles easily. And carbon-coated M-Li2MnSiO4 shows smaller charge transfer resistance and higher capacity of 217 mA h g(-1) because carbon coating retains the porous structure and enhances the electrical conductivity.