Defect engineering of air-stable Li5FeO4 towards an ultra-high capacity cathode prelithiation additive

Abstract

Antifluorite-type Li₅FeO₄ (LFO) belongs to a class of promising prelithiation materials for next-generation high-energy lithium-ion batteries. Unfortunately, the incomplete de-lithiation performance and inferior air stability hinder its application. In this work, ultra-high capacity is achieved by selective doping of Zr into the Fe sites (LFO-Zr) of LFO to form a large number of defects. The underlying defect formation mechanism is comprehensively investigated using density functional theory, revealing that such selective site doping not only enlarges the unit cell volume but also induces Li vacancies into the structure, both of which facilitate lithium-ion migration at a high-rate and promote the redox of oxygen anions. As a result, under 0.05 and 1C rates, the capacity of LFO-Zr reaches 805.7 and 624.5 mA h g⁻¹, which are 69.0 and 262.0 mA h g⁻¹ higher than those of LFO, translating to an increase of 9.4% and 73.3%, respectively. In addition, LFO-Zr exhibits excellent electrochemical performance in a humidity of 20%, with a high capacity of 577.6 mA h g⁻¹ maintained. With the LFO-Zr additive, the full cell delivered 193.6 mA h g⁻¹ for the initial cycle at 0.1C. The defect engineering strategy presented in this work delivers insights to promote ultra-high capacity and high-rate performance of air-stable LFO.