Effect of CuO on the electrochemical activity of Li2MnO3

A new effect to induce the electrochemical activity of Li2MnO3 was found. The samples prepared by co-precipitation consisted of Li2MnO3 and CuO phases. The particle size of Li2MnO3 was much smaller than that of CuO by using TEM observation equipped with EDX. The specific charge and discharge capacity increased with the content of CuO, while maintaining the electrochemical characters of Li2MnO3. The ab-initio electronic structure calculation was carried out and the densities of states (DOS) were obtained for Cu-containing Li2MnO3 supercell and Li2MnO3. On basis of experimental and calculated results, a partial replacing Mn by Cu could improve the electrical property of Li2MnO3. A possible reason of the effect is that coexisting with CuO depressed the kinetic barrier of the electrode reaction for Li2MnO3.