Mineral-Mediated Epitaxial Growth of CoO Nanoparticles for Efficient Electrochemical HO Activation.

Solution-phase epitaxy is a versatile method to synthesize functional nanomaterials with customized properties, where supports play a central role as they not only serve as nucleation templates but also greatly affect the local electronic structures. However, developing functional supports remains a great challenge. Herein, inspired by the commonly observed epitaxy of minerals in the natural environment, we report using calcination-modified kaolinite as the support for the epitaxial growth of hexagonal CoO nanoparticles (-CoO NPs), which enables over 40 times higher mass-specific activity toward HO electrochemical activation than the counterpart without the support.

Enhancing Orbital Interaction in Spinel LiNiMnO Cathode for High-Voltage and High-Rate Li-Ion Batteries.

High voltage cobalt-free spinel LiNiMnO (LNMO) is well organized as a high-power cathode material for lithium (Li)-ion batteries, however, the weak interaction between the 3d orbital of the transition metal (TM) ions and the 2p orbital of oxygen (O) leads to the instability of crystal structural, hindering the long-term stable cycling of LNMO cathode especially at high temperatures. Here, a design strategy of orbital interaction is initiated to strengthen TM 3d-O 2p framework in P-doped LNMO (P-LNMO) by choosing phytic acid as P dopant, which can realize more uniform doping compared to regular phosphate. The results show that the enhancement of TM 3d-O 2p orbital interaction in P-LNMO can suppress the Jahn-Teller effect and subsequent dissolution of Mn, as well as lowers the energy barrier for Li ion insertion/extraction kinetics.