Description

• General description: Anhydrous lithium nitrate is a white, crystalline salt. The anhydrous form is hygroscopic and deliquescent. The salt is soluble in water, ethanol, methanol, pyridine, ammonia, and acetone. Like some other metal nitrates, lithium nitrate has a low melting point of only 264 °C, and decomposes above 600 °C. Because of its low melting point, it is used to produce low-melting fused-salt mixtures in ceramics and heat-exchange media. Lithium nitrate is produced by the acid-base reaction between nitric acid and lithium carbonate, which evolves carbon dioxide and water. The resulting material is dried, purified, and heated to form the anhydrous product.
• Application: Researchers and manufacturers use lithium nitrate in the preparation of many lithium compounds, most notably lithium nickel oxide (LiNiO2)[1] and lithium manganese oxide (LiMn2O4).[2] One common strategy for synthesizing these lithium metal oxides involves a high-temperature reaction of lithium nitrate with a metal carbonate, like nickel carbonate, or with a metal oxide, like manganese oxide. At temperatures above 650 °C, lithium nitrate evolves oxygen gas and nitrogen dioxide gas and decomposes through a complex process into lithium oxide, which reacts with the metal precursors to form the tertiary or quaternary lithium metal oxides. Researchers have used this technique to prepare exciting new materials, like LiAl0.25Ni0.75O2[3] as a cathode material in lithium-ion batteries and LiGa5O8 [4] as a phosphor for optical information storage. Because lithium nitrate is soluble in water, researchers also use lithium nitrate in the synthesis of lithium compounds using a host of solution-based chemistries. For example, microwave-induced combustion using solutions of lithium nitrate has yielded olivine-type lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4), lithium cobalt oxide (LiCoO2), and lithium titanium oxides (ex. Li4Ti5O12 and Li2TiO3). [5] Hydrothermal processing, sol-gel processing, spray pyrolysis, co-precipitation pre-processing, and Li emulsion-drying methods have all used lithium nitrate as a reactant to form lithium metal oxides. These techniques can yield controlled particle size, grain size, crystallinity, or facilitate the introduction of dopants for engineering the properties of the products, often explored for next-generation lithium-ion batteries. Our battery grade lithium nitrate with ≥99.9% trace metals purity and low chloride and sulfate impurities, is designed as a precursor for cathode materials for lithium-ion batteries.