We just got back from a group lunch/farewell to @ashok_menon12. I will use this opportunity to talk a little bit about what Ashok has done during his PhD. Ashok has worked with what is known as Li and Mn-rich layered oxides.
The Li and Mn rich oxide materials are interesting as they have the potential to store a lot more energy compared to regular battery cathodes.
The reason is due to the excess lithium which sits in the transition metal layer. The presence of Li in this layer creates local Li-O-Li bonding environments allowing of anionic redox due to unhybridised O orbitals. Below I show the regular LiCoO2 (yellow) and Li2MnO3 (purple).
However, this excess lithium has other structural consequences. Namely, the formation of a hexagonal arrangement of cations in the transition metal layer.
However, how these layers in the structure arrange can shift. Leading to a kind of disorder known as stacking faults. In the clip I represent Li and Mn environments as hexagons. The shifts show how two adjacent layers can be placed relative to each other.
The question that Ashok aimed to answer was how the synthesis route impacted the degree of faulting and properties in the relatively simple compound Li2MnO3. pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/ac…
It turns out that the synthesis route did have a significant impact with a solid state "shake and bake" route producing a mix of faulted and unfaulted structures and the solgel route forming a more homogeneous structure.
We didn't know it at the time...but this would be significant foreshadowing for what would become the theme of his whole PhD thesis. More on that soon
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