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Received: November 06, 2019; Revised: November 29, 2019; Accepted: November 29, 2019
Abstract: An efficient wet process approach to modifying natural graphite (NG) electrodes for Li-ion batteries is introduced in this paper. With homogeneous mixing and thermal decomposition of NG with diammonium phosphate ((NH4)2HPO4), phosphorus and nitrogen were successfully incorporated into the surface layer of NG particles. Electron microscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy analyses demonstrated that the surface was well modified by this process. As a result, the treated NG electrodes exhibited much improved electrochemical performance over pristine NG at two different temperatures: 25 °C and 50 °C. Excellent capacity retention of 95.6% was obtained after 100 cycles at 50 °C. These enhanced properties were confirmed in a morphology analysis on the cross-sections of the NG electrodes after galvanostatic cycling. The improved cycle and thermal stabilities can be attributed to the surface treatment with phosphorus and nitrogen; the treatment formed a stable solid electrolyte interphase layer that performed well when undergoing Li insertion and extraction cycling.