Liquid phase exfoliation of nonlayered non-van der Waals iron trifluoride (FeF₃) into 2D-platelets for high-capacity lithium storing cathodes

Developing high-performance cathode materials for lithium-ion batteries is necessary to maximise both energy and power density. One promising cathode material is iron trifluoride (FeF₃) having a high theoretical capacity of 712 mAh/g, although achieving this value experimentally is challenging. Our previous works has shown that achievable capacity can be maximised when active materials are in a two-dimensional (2D) form. Liquid-phase exfoliation (LPE) method seems intuitively inappropriate to produce 2D-platelets from non-layered non-Van der Waals (non-VdW) bulk materials. However, in this manuscript, we show that bulk non-layered non-VdW material, FeF₃ can be converted from its 3D form to quasi-2D platelets. The XRD, TEM and elemental analysis showed the structure and stoichiometry of these platelets to be similar to that of bulk material. Interestingly, although AFM showed majority of platelets to be quasi-2D, it revealed the platelet aspect-ratio to be thickness dependent, falling from ∼12 for the thinnest platelets to ∼1 for the thickest ones. Lithium storage experiments showed that, once coated in carbon and mixed with single walled nanotubes, FeF₃ platelets display good Li storage capability coupled with reasonable stability. At very low currents, this material displays an active-mass normalised capacity of ∼700 mAh/g, very close to the theoretical value. However, the capacity fell off at higher currents with detailed analysis implying FeF₃ cathodes in general to display poor rate performance due to low ionic diffusivity.