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.

中文翻译：

---

过渡金属氧化物纳米颗粒的表面性质和相互作用：可持续性视角

锂插层化合物代表了一类技术上相关的纳米颗粒，它们彻底改变了能量存储，即在其实际应用中用作可充电锂离子电池中使用的阴极材料。这种材料的重要一类是形式为LiMO ₂的锂金属氧化物，其中M代表Fe，Mn，Co或Ni。在过去十年中，对这些材料的需求导致产量快速增长。但是，在使用这些材料后，处置这些材料的基础设施很少，而在环境条件下对其转化的了解也很少。从这个角度出发，作者强调了最近对这些材料的表面性能进行研究的工作，以便在实验和计算研究中获得对复杂金属氧化物转化的基本分子水平的了解。