A solid-state 51V NMR characterization of vanadium sites in LiCoxNi1−xVO4

LiCoxNi1−xVO4 compounds (x=0, 0.2, 0.5, 0.8, 1.0) have been prepared for lithium ion batteries by different preparation methods, namely, wet-chemistry (WC) and solid-state (SS) routes. 51V nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) has been employed to accurately assess the vanadium environments in these materials and results show that vanadium atoms are distributed in octahedral and tetrahedral sites. The fractions of vanadium atoms in tetrahedral/octahedral sites depends on composition and sample preparation conditions. The tetrahedral site, which is particularly dominant in samples produced via the WC route, is more affected by paramagnetic interactions and its 51V NMR spectrum is essentially Gaussian in shape. The octahedral site, on the other hand, exhibits first-order quadrupolar broadened satellites. Even though tetrahedral sites for a given x are comparable for WC and SS materials, there are some differences amongst octahedral environments, namely in the distributions of quadrupolar broadened satellites. The larger satellite distribution observed for WC materials is indicative of a larger distribution of structural defects for these as compared to SS materials.