Investigation of crystal field excitations in Li ion battery cathode materials

Mixed lithium ion transition metal oxides LiNixMnyCozO2 (x+y+z=1) (commonly abbreviated as Li NMC oxides) are next-generation lithium ion battery cathode materials for electric vehicles and grid storage. These materials consist of multivalent transition metal ions in octahedral coordination. We propose that inelastic neutron scattering (INS) experiments can be used to measure the single-ion spectrum of each magnetic ion and hence model each valence state separately. In this experiment we aim to determine whether INS measurements of these single-ion levels are feasible by measuring each ionic species present in the Li NMC oxides separately. The materials we propose to measure containing a single ionic species are LiCoO2 (Co3+), LiMn2O4 (Mn3+/4+), NaNiO2 (Ni3+), MnO2 (Mn4+) and NiO (Ni2+).