Re-evaluation of battery-grade lithium purity toward sustainable batteries

Recently, the cost of lithium-ion batteries has risen as the price of lithium raw materials has soared and fluctuated. Notably, the highest cost of lithium production comes from the impurity elimination process to satisfy the battery-grade purity of over 99.5%. Consequently, re-evaluating the impact of purity becomes imperative for affordable lithium-ion batteries. In this study, we unveil that a 1% Mg impurity in the lithium precursor proves beneficial for both the lithium production process and the electrochemical performance of resulting cathodes. This is attributed to the increased nucleation seeds and unexpected site-selective doping effects. Moreover, when extended to an industrial scale, low-grade lithium is found to reduce production costs and CO 2 emissions by up to 19.4% and 9.0%, respectively. This work offers valuable insights into the genuine sustainability of lithium-ion batteries. Due to recent fluctuations in lithium prices, the instability of lithium-ion batteries prices is on the rise. Here, through a re-evaluation of purity criteria, the authors report that the presence of magnesium impurity in lithium precursor actually improves cathode performance, economics, and environmental aspects.