LiMnPO4 - The Thermal Instability of the De-lithiated Phase

Further to the entry below - the paper by Guoying Chen and Thomas Richardson (Lawrence Berkeley Labs.) on the Thermal Instability of Olivine-type LiMnPO4 Cathodes has now been published in the J. Power Sources. The abstract may be found here:

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jpowsour.2009.08.046

In essence, the paper reports that de-lithiated LixMnPO4 is thermally unstable and reactive toward a lithium-ion electrolyte. Furthermore, the total evolved heat is 884 J g−1, comparable to that produced under similar conditions by charged LiCoO2 electrodes.

This is bad news for organizations developing next generation lithium-ion batteries based on this material and comes as somewhat of a surprise. Most commentators in this sector predicted that the thermal behaviour of the LiMnPO4 olivine phase would be similar to the iron analogue, LiFePO4.