The nature of the nonmetal-metal transition in LixCoO 2 oxide

Abstract

In this paper we analyze the nature of the nonmetal-metal transition in the LixCoO2 oxide (0.53 ≥ x ≥ 1) on the basis on the investigations of the structural, transport properties, oxygen K-edge NEXAFS spectroscopy and calculated density of states (DOS). Our investigations show that the stoichiometric Li1CoO2 oxide is a semiconductor, but extraction of the lithium ions leads to the metallic properties of the system. Besides, KKR-CPA showed that the distortion of the oxygen octahedron significantly modifies top valence states. We postulate that the nonmetal-metal transition can be interpreted on the basis on the Anderson type transition. © 2014 Elsevier B.V.