Nano/micro lithium transitionmetal (Fe, Mn, Co and Ni) silicate cathode materials for lithium ion batteries

Lithium transitionmetal (Fe, Mn, Co, Ni) silicate cathode materials are new promising substituting cathode materials for lithium ion batteries. They had caught the researchers' eyes in the past several years. Nowadays, there are growing interests for silicate cathode materials in the field of lithium ion batteries. Among the silicate cathode materials, Li2FeSiO4 is the most promising cathode materials because of its high structure stability, high reversible capacity, high electronic conductivity and the abundant resource of iron and silicon. Although Li2MnSiO4 and Li2CoSiO4 have much higher theoretic specific capacity than Li2FeSiO4, they all have inferior electrochemical behaviours due to different reasons. There are only calculation results about Li2NiSiO4 till now. This brief critical review firstly discussed some papers about the first-principle calculation of Li2MSiO4 (M=Fe, Mn, Co Ni), and then collects and discusses relevant papers and recent patents about the fabrication, structure, particle size and electrochemical performance of nano/micro Li2MSiO4 (M=Fe, Mn, Co Ni) and their composites. Finally, the future challenges of Li2FeSiO4 are also discussed.