The study of (Ni,Mn,Co)SO4as raw material for NMC precursor in lithium ion battery

Abstract

Recent technology of electric vehicle has been significantly improved due to the lithium-ion battery application that indispensable. Li(NMC)O2 is one of the most highly demanding cathode materials. NMC cathode with high rich nickel exhibited excellent characteristic and high specific capacity. NMC active material is usually produced by calcination of NMC precursor mixed with lithium source. NMC precursor plays important role on determining quality of the active material NMC. The synthesis methods, such as co-precipitation are challenging to obtain the desire precursor, but the quality also depend on the raw materials. Those raw materials in powder form are NiSO4, MnSO4, CoSO4 (metal sulphate). This paper describes the general properties of the NMC-sulphate, their crystal structure, microstructure and its elementary component by XRD, SEM and X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF). It is important to perform raw material characterizations before synthesizing into NMC Precursor. The XRD results showed the crystal structure of NiSO4.6H2O, MnSO4.H2O, CoSO4.7H2O corresponded to 100% phases Regersite, 100% Szmikite and 100% Moorhouseite, respectively. The XRF summary resulted that the nickel contents in NiSO4.6H2O was about 78% manganese content in MnSO4.H2O was about 77.7%, and cobalt content in CoSO4.7H2O was about 80.7%. The understanding properties of the raw materials was very important in order to achieve best quality of NMC precursor and the final product of NMC Cathode.