Surface properties and interactions of transition metal oxide nanoparticles: A perspective on sustainability

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Lithium intercalation compounds represent a class of technologically relevant nanoparticles that have revolutionized energy storage, namely, in their practical application as cathode materials used in rechargeable lithium ion batteries. An important class of such materials is the lithium metal oxides with the form LiMO2, where M represents Fe, Mn, Co, or Ni. The demand for these materials has led to a rapid increase in production volume in the last decade; however, there is very little infrastructure in place for disposal of these materials after use and very little is known about their transformations under environmental conditions. In this perspective, the authors highlight recent work investigating the surface properties of these materials to gain a fundamental molecular-level understanding of the transformations of complex metal oxides in experimental and computational studies.