The
lithium-rich manganese (LRM)-based cathode materials are always
subjected to poor rate capacity and terrible voltage fading. Herein,
sodium citrate as a chelating agent is introduced to synthesize LRM
cathode materials with high structure stability by the solvothermal
method to solve the abovementioned issues. Sodium citrate can effectively
control the morphology of cathode materials with a small size of primary
particles, which can prevent the side reaction between the active
materials and electrolyte and benefit Li+ diffusion. Meanwhile,
the hydroxyl groups in sodium citrate can alter the crystal growth
thermodynamics and thereby induce the formation of the active {010}
planes under the solvothermal condition, which facilitates the formation
of a good layered structure, so that the electrochemical reaction
kinetics and rate performance are facilitated dramatically. Furthermore,
benefitting from the doping of Na+, the structure of the
cathode material does not collapse during repeated charge–discharge
cycles, so that voltage stability is enhanced greatly. Consequently,
at a current density of 5 C after cycling 200 times, the reversible
capacity of the designed LRM cathode is 166 mA h g–1 with a high capacity retention of 90.1%, and the median voltage
remains at 3.21 V with a voltage retention of 91.4%. The median voltage
could remain as high as 3.37 V with a very high voltage retention
of 94.1% even at 10 C after 200 cycles. This study proposes a novel
strategy that utilizes the synergistic modification of morphology
design and Na+ doping to increase the lithium storage performance
of LRM cathode materials.