Low Temperature Epitaxial LiMn 2 O 4 Cathodes Enabled by NiCo 2 O 4 Current Collector for High-Performance Microbatteries.

Epitaxial cathodes in lithium-ion microbatteries are ideal model systems to understand mass and charge transfer across interfaces, plus interphase degradation processes during cycling. Importantly, if grown at <450 °C, they also offer potential for complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) compatible microbatteries for the Internet of Things, flexible electronics, and MedTech devices. Currently, prominent epitaxial cathodes are grown at high temperatures (>600 °C), which imposes both manufacturing and scale-up challenges. Herein, we report structural and electrochemical studies of epitaxial LiMnO (LMO) thin films grown on a new current collector material, NiCoO (NCO). We achieve this at the low temperature of 360 °C, ∼200 °C lower than existing current collectors SrRuO and LaNiO. Our films achieve a discharge capacity of >100 mAh g for ∼6000 cycles with distinct LMO redox signatures, demonstrating long-term electrochemical stability of our NCO current collector. Hence, we show a route toward high-performance microbatteries for a range of miniaturized electronic devices.