Improvement of electrochemical stability of NCM cathode materials recycled via organic acid leaching and Mn addition

Recycling spent Li-ion batteries (LIBs) is not only an important action for mitigating the environmental problem caused by the pilling up of toxic battery wastes. This action is also a very good way to ensure battery production sustainability in the middle of the scarcity and rocketing price of constituent materials. Among various methods studied for recycling batteries, organic acid leaching and coprecipitation are considered good techniques to recover the valuable metal ions for their high efficiency and low environmental pollution hazard. Our previous study investigated the regeneration of Li (Ni1/3Co1/3Mn1/3) O2 cathode materials via leaching and coprecipitation using organic acids. However, we found out that the composition of Ni:Co:Mn in the regenerated sample was near to 1:1:1 with a slightly lower amount of Mn. Therefore, in this study, we intend to investigate the effect of Mn amount adjustment on NCM 111 cathode’s electrochemical properties. The characterization using XRD and SEM shows that the Mn-added sample shows similar features to that of prepared without Mn addition. The characterization of both samples’ electrochemical properties shows that the sample prepared with Mn addition showed a more stable charge-discharge operation at high C-rates. However, this sample showed a lower capacity (156.7 mAh/g) than the normal sample (164.9 mAh/g).