Development of surface functionalized ZnO-doped LiFePO₄/C composites as alternative cathode material for lithium ion batteries

Highlights: • Pristine LFP and ZnO-doped LFP/C samples have been synthesized using sol-gel assisted ball milling route. • Electronic conductivity of pristine LFP increases to 10²-10³ orders of magnitude for ZnO doped LFP/C samples. • AFM results indicate the presence of more volumetric charge density at the surface for ZnO-doped LFP/C sample. • LFPZ2.5 shows best cycling and rate performances among all the prepared samples. • Lithium ion diffusion coefficient increases significantly. - Abstract: Surface modified olivine-type LiFePO₄/C-ZnO doped samples were synthesized using sol-gel assisted ball-milling route. In this work, the influence of ZnO-doping on the physiochemical, electrochemical and surface properties such as charge separation at solid-liquid interphase, surface force gradient, surface/ionic conductivity of pristine LiFePO₄/C (LFP) has been investigated thoroughly. Synthesized samples were characterized using X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy, and transmission electron microscopy. All the synthesized samples were indexed to the orthorhombic phase with Pnma space group. Pristine LiFePO₄ retain its structure for higher ZnO concentrations (i.e. 2.5 and 5.0 wt.% of LFP). Surface topography and surface force gradient measurements by EFM revealed that the kinetics of charge carriers, e⁻/Li⁺ is more in ZnO-doped LFP samples, which may be attributed to diffusion or conduction process of the charges present at the surface. Among all the synthesized samples LFP/C with 2.5 wt.% of ZnO (LFPZ2.5) displays the highest discharge capacity at all C-rates and exhibit excellent rate performance. LFPZ2.5 delivers a specific discharge capacity of 164 (±3) mAh g⁻¹ at 0.1C rate. LFPZ2.5 shows best cycling performance as it provides a discharge capacity of 135 (±3) mAh g⁻¹ at 1C rate and shows almost 95% capacity retention after 50 charge/discharge cycles. Energy density plot shows that LFPZ2.5 offers high energy and power density measured at high discharge rates (5C), proving its usability for hybrid vehicles application.