Local structure in ‘disordered’ rocksalt cathode materials for Li-ion batteries

New families of cathode materials for Li-ion batteries, with greater capacities, are required to more effectively meet the worlds energy storage demands. Li-excess, cation disordered materials such as Li1.25Nb0.25Mn0.5O2 (LiNbMnO) have shown promise as materials with significantly higher capacities than their layered counterparts and allow for a broad compositional range. However the nature of the long- and short-range cation ordering (or disordering) within these materials is not yet well understood. In a recent publication we reported short-range order present in LiNbMnO, and with the help of neutron total scattering from Polaris we characterised the material's local structure. We have since observed a new ordering ordering regime, and so we propose to carry out high quality total neutron scattering on several further, more highly-ordered samples of LiNbMnO to finish our study.