Electrochemical and Thermal Property Enhancement of Natural Graphite Electrodes via a Phosphorus and Nitrogen Incorporating Surface Treatment

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 ℃ and 50 ℃. Excellent capacity retention of 95.6% was obtained after 100 cycles at 50 ℃. 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.