Preparation and characterization of spinel Li4Ti5O12 anode material from industrial titanyl sulfate solution

Spinel Li₄Ti₅O₁₂ anode material is successfully synthesized by a solid-state method using lithium carbonate and titanium precursors which are prepared by the low cost industrial titanyl sulfate solution. The characters of H₂TiO₃ and TiO₂ precursors are determined by TG/DTA and SEM methods. TG-DAT and EDS methods show that H₂TiO₃ can absorb sulphate ions which can be present as impurities. XRD method shows that the impure phases of Li₂SO₄ and rutile TiO₂ appear in Li₄Ti₅O₁₂ synthesized by H₂TiO₃. The formation of Li₂SO₄ is identified in thermodynamics during the process of calcination. Owing to the formation of Li₂SO₄ impurity, the capacity of the Li₄Ti₅O₁₂ synthesized by H₂TiO₃ is low. One effective way that can tackle this problem is to remove the sulphur by calcining H₂TiO₃, after calcinations, the production will have a thermal treatment with Li₂CO₃. The obtained Li₄Ti₅O₁₂ shows better electrochemical performance. The specific capacities can be increased by 20 mAh g⁻¹ at 0.1, 0.5 and 1C rates.