Sustainable Recycling of Cathode Scrap towards High-Performance Anode Materials for Li-Ion Batteries

Pollution from spent batteries is causing an environmental crisis, driving the development of innovative recycling and upcycling methods. Conventional recycling technologies are plagued by the technical barriers of high pollution, low efficiency, and poor product utilization. Herein, an innovative and sustainable method is reported of in situ selective and precise recycling of cathode scrap into high value-added transition metal oxides, as well as in-depth verification of their suitability as lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) anodes. The recycled ZnMn₂O₄ material exhibits extremely high discharge specific capacity and performs well at high rates. This unique selective conversion technology, attributed to the co-octahedral retention conversion, can be applied to obtain a variety of anode materials from aged cells. A successful demonstration of the reconversion of waste LiMn₂O₄ and LiCoO₂ to obtain transition metal oxide materials provides the possibility of further efficient green recycling approaches for large-scale applications.