Research Progress in the Cathode Materials of Lithium Iron Phosphate

College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu 610500, China

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Abstract

With the worldwide changes to renewables and electrifying transportation, LIBs are essential; however, the current cathodes have a high cost and poor thermal stability. Lithium iron phosphate becomes a hopeful cathode because of its good thermal safety, cheap price, and long-lasting cycle life, although it is bad for electronic conduction, slow ion movement, and moderate specific capacity. This review sums up LFP’s crystal structures, synthesis methods, modifications, and structure-property relations. Synthesis methods for material production encompass both solidphase and liquid-phase approaches, with the former including mature yet energy-intensive high-temperature solid-state methods (operating at 10k- ton/year scales) and more economical carbothermal reduction utilizing Fe³⁺ sources, while the latter comprises hydrothermal synthesis (yielding high crystallinity though limited to batch processes), low-energy semi-continuous co-precipitation, and high-purity but costly sol-gel techniques. Modifications—carbon coating, heteroatom doping, nanostructuring, and composites—to address the LFP’s flaws. LFP now over 50% of the global power battery cathode market and the stationary storage. Future directions are low-energy synthesis, atom-level change, and composite issue resolution. It informs LFP-based LIB optimization.