A microstructure engineered perovskite super anode with Li-storage life of exceeding 10,000 cycles

Rechargeable lithium-ion batteries have largely promoted our modern civilization in the past few decades. However, nowadays lithium ion technology is still dominated by the early invented materials which suffer from low volumetric capacity and limited cycle life. Herein, a Li-ion-conducting perovskite material Li0.33La0.56Ti0.9Ni0.1O3-δ is synthesized as a new anode material. After carbon coating and in-situ Ni-exsolution, this novel engineered material emerges as a super anode (Super A©) with all-around outstanding characteristics compared with other counterparts including the state-of-the-art anode graphite. This new anode has a low working potential (1 V vs. Li+/Li), high reversible capacity (352 or 457 mAh g−1 under different modes), ultra-long cycle life (over 10,000 cycles at 2 A g−1), excellent fast-charge, low-temperature and anti-overcharge performances. Particularly, Super A© can achieve a rather high volumetric capacity up to 2267 Ah L−1 (vs. 608, 837 and 2062 Ah L−1 for Li4Ti5O12, graphite and lithium, respectively). Based on quantumchemical calculations, we propose a new lithium storage mechanism in coupling vacancies existing in the perovskite structure. This work presents a promising next-generation anode material for commercial lithium-ion products. It also provides a new methodology to design ceramic-based electrode materials for the electrochemical rechargeable batteries.