Low temperature hydrothermal synthesis and electrochemical performances of LiFePO4 microspheres as a cathode material for lithium-ion batteries

Mesoporous LiFePO₄ microspheres were simply synthesized by a low temperature (130°C), template-free hydrothermal route using low cost LiOH, Fe(NO₃)₃ and NH₄H₂PO₄ as starting raw materials. These microspheres are composed of densely aggregated LiFePO₄ nanoparticles and filled with interconnected mesochannels, which demonstrates not only a high tap density (?1.4 g cm^?3), a high capacity of 150 mAh g-1 (??90% of its theoretical capacity) at 0.5 C rate, but also a ? 80% utilization of its theoretical capacity at a high rate of 1 C. In addition, the hydrothermal synthesis developed in this work is simple and cost-effective, it may provide a new route for production of the LiFePO₄ material in battery applications.