Electrochemical Oscillation during Galvanostatic Charging of LiCrTiO₄ in Li-Ion Batteries

In the late 1960s, the establishment of Prigogine's dissipative structure theory laid the foundation for the (electro)chemical oscillation phenomenon, which has been widely investigated in some electrochemical reactions, such as electro-catalysis and electro-deposition, while the electrochemical oscillation of Li-ion batteries has just been discovered in spinel Li₄Ti₅O₁₂ a few years before. In this work, spinel LiCrTiO₄ samples were synthesized by using a high-temperature solid-state method, characterized with SEM (Scanning electron microscope), XRD (X-ray diffraction), Raman and XPS (X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy) measurements, and electrochemically tested in Li-ion batteries to study the electrochemical oscillation. When sintering in a powder form at a temperature between 800 and 900 °C, we achieved the electrochemical oscillation of spinel LiCrTiO₄ during charging, and it is suppressed in the non-stoichiometric LiCrTiO₄ samples, especially for reducing the Li content or increasing the Cr content. Therefore, this work developed another two-phase material as the powder-sintered LiCrTiO₄ exhibiting the electrochemical oscillation in Li-ion batteries, which would inspire us to explore more two-phase electrode materials in Li-ion batteries, Na-ion batteries, etc.