Original Article

Novel KOH treated Li-CuO as cathode for the application of lithium-ion batteries

¹ Department of Physics, M.B. University, Tirupathi, India
² Department of Physics, Osmania University, Hyderabad, India
³ SSN Research Centre, Sri Sivasubramaniya Nadar College of Engineering, Kalavakkam, India
⁴ QIS College of Engineering and Technology, Ongole, India

^* e-mail: madhuvm123@yahoo.com

Received: 14 March 2023
Received in final form: 25 June 2023
Accepted: 3 November 2023
Published online: 18 December 2023

Abstract

Lithiated CuO (Li-CuO) micro-structures were synthesized by the hydrothermal method using KOH as a reactive solution. The structural properties of pure Li-CuO and other KOH-reacted CuO samples were characterized by XRD analysis. Various vibrational bands were observed by FTIR spectra analysis. The SEM images indicated the formation of Li-CuO hexagonal rods of 1–2 µm dimension. The cyclic efficiencies of pure Li-CuO and 12 M KOH surfactant Li-CuO microstructures were observed to be 78.5% and 91.2%, respectively. The battery discharge characteristics revealed that after 50 cycles, the specific capacity of the battery based on a pure Li-CuO microstructure electrode showed 97 mAh g⁻¹ whereas KOH surfactant Li-CuO microstructures electrode showed 150 mAh g⁻¹ at a constant current density of 17.79 mA g⁻¹ with a 1.0–4.0 V vs. Li/Li⁺ potential range. The enhancement of specific capacity and its stability due to a well-defined hexagonal crystal structure leads to increase Li⁺ ion kinetics during the insertion and extraction processes of batteries.