Nanocrystalline Iron Oxides Prepared via Co-Precipitation for Lithium Battery Cathode Applications

Aqueous, low-temperature co-precipitation syntheses afford environmentally sustainable, economically viable methods to produce energy storage materials based on iron, an earth-abundant material. Systematically altering the parameters of a co-precipitation reaction yields nanomaterials with distinct chemical compositions and crystallite sizes. Compared to bulk material, nanomaterials posses inimitable ion-transport kinetics and cycling ability. Magnetite (Fe3O4) and silver ferrite (Ag x FeO2) are discussed here as examples of nanocrystalline iron oxide materials in which the electrochemical performance (i.e. overall capacity, cycling efficiency, magnitude of polarization) directly correlates with composition and crystallite size.