In this study, we will show how the oxygen release depends on the Li 2 MnO 3 content of the material and how it affects the actual voltage fading of the material. Thus, we compared overlithiated NCMs (x Li 2 MnO 3 • (1-x) LiMeO 2 ; Me = Ni, Co, Mn) with x = 0.33, 0.42 and 0.50, focusing on oxygen release and electrochemical performance. We could show that the oxygen release differs vastly for the materials, while voltage fading is similar, which leads to the conclusion that the oxygen release is a chemical material degradation, occurring at the surface, while voltage fading is a bulk issue of these materials. We could prove this hypothesis by HRTEM, showing a surface layer, which is dependent on the amount of oxygen released in the first cycles and leads to an increase of the charge-transfer resistance of these materials. Furthermore, we could quantitatively deconvolute capacity contributions from bulk and surface regions by dQ/dV analysis and correlate them to the oxygen loss. As a last step, we compared the gassing to the base NCM (LiMeO 2 , Me = Ni, Co, Mn), showing that surface degradation follows a similar reaction pathway and can be easily To face future issues, as global warming, air pollution, as well as the consumption of fossil fuels, an alternative is required to cover the future demand of energy and mobility in an environmentally friendly and sustainable way. In this context, lithium-ion batteries are viable options for large scale energy storage and for electric vehicles, as they have been used to power consumer electronics for many years.
1,2Since graphite is an excellent anode material at potentials of ≈0.1 V vs. Li + /Li with a roughly 2-fold higher specific capacity of about 360 mAh/g compared to currently used cathode active materials (CAMs), many efforts have been undertaken to increase the specific capacity and energy density of CAMs. As first practical cathode active material Lithium-Cobalt-Oxide (LCO) was investigated by Goodenough et al. in the 1980s, exhibiting a specific capacity of about 140 mAh/g and having a layered structure composed of lithium and transition metal layers.3 As these layered structures showed good structural stability during lithium extraction and insertion, and therefore good capacity retention, many attempts have been undertaken to further develop alternative layered structures which would offer higher capacity. One promising attempt that led to the currently used Lithium-NickelCobalt-Manganese-Oxides (NCMs) is to change the occupancy of the transition metal layer by not using exclusively cobalt, but also introducing nickel and manganese into the transition metal layer; hereby it was found that nickel shows a high redox activity, while manganese helps to stabilize the structure during lithium extraction.4-6 By using different transition metals and metal compositions, a playground has been created that allows to tune the properties of the material: while initially a Ni:Co:Mn ratio of 1:1:1 was used (also referred to as NCM-111), trends nowadays favor the so-called Ni...