Ch3cooli 2h2o

For the synthesis of the material, a variant of the acetate method as proposed by Kalapsazova et al. [45 (link)] was used. A 2.72 g portion of sodium acetate tri-hydrate (CH₃COONa·3H₂O, M.W.: 136.08, 0.02 mol, Aldrich), 0.408 g of lithium acetate bi-hydrate (CH₃COOLi·2H₂O, M.W.: 102.02, 0.04 mol, Aldrich), 1.244 g of nickel (II) acetate tetra-hydrate (Ni(OCOCH₃)₂·4H₂O, M.W.: 248.84, 0.005 mol, Aldrich), and 3.676 g of manganese (II) acetate tetra-hydrate ((CH₃COO)₂Mn·4H₂O, M.W.: 245.09, 0.015 mol, Aldrich) were loaded in a stainless steel vial, together with two stainless steel balls. The vial was mounted in a shaker mill (SPEX 8000, CertPrep, Metuchen, NJ, USA) and milled for 1 h. After milling, the mixture of acetates became liquid. The liquid was transferred to a ceramic crucible, heated in air at 800 °C for 4 h, and left to cool at room temperature.

Another 0.5Li₂MnO₃·0.5LiCoO₂ sample of cathode material was synthesized via a sol-gel method. CH₃COOLi·2H₂O (Aldrich), Mn(CH₃COO)₂∙4H₂O (Aldrich), and Co(CH₃COO)_2··4H₂O (Aldrich) were used as the precursors and ascorbic acid as the chelating agent (ascorbic acid to metal ion molar ratio of 0.5:1). Stoichiometric amounts of the starting materials and ascorbic acid were dissolved in 200 mL of ethanol and stirred for approximately 3 hours at 80^°C. After the mixture became a dried gel, it was first calcined at 300^°C for 3 hours in air. The mixture was then ground with agate mortar and pestle, calcined again at 800^°C for 10 hours in air and then cooled to room temperature in the furnace.