The increasing demand for higher energy density in lithium-ion batteries has driven significant interest in layered oxide cathode materials. However, their development is hindered by an inherent trade-off between structural stability and ion transport kinetics. This compromise often manifests as a conflict between achieving high capacity, long cycle life, and excellent rate performance. Consequently, mitigating structural degradation and minimizing interfacial side reactions have emerged as core research priorities. Based on this, this review summarizes the crystal chemistry and key challenges of three main types of layered oxide cathode materials, and critically evaluates two main modification strategies: bulk doping, which enhances performance by regulating the electronic structure and suppressing phase transitions; and surface coating, which builds a protective layer at the particle–electrolyte interface to suppress side reactions and metal dissolution. Looking ahead, in terms of modification, the focus should be on multi-scale co-doping to construct a stable bulk phase structure and multi-functional coating to optimize the interface. Integrating artificial intelligence with high-throughput computation will powerfully enable the pursuit of these advanced modification strategies. This integrated approach may resolve the fundamental contradiction between energy density and stability, thereby paving a new pathway for next-generation lithium-ion batteries.
Lin et al. (Mon,) studied this question.