Temperature Raman study of Li4Ti5O12 and ambiguity in the number of its bands

Abstract

The two primary physical methods for identifying lithium titanate, a negative electrode material used commercially, are X-Ray diffraction and Raman spectroscopy. Although there are many publications on this topic, they are focused mainly on chemistry, so there are still some points that require clarification from a physical and methodological point of view. Difference of experimentally observed and theoretically predicted Raman spectra was explained through a combination of experiments and computations. The work comprises experiments and computations to explain why there are different numbers of predicted and observed Raman-active bands. Our low-temperature study and the analysis of thermal shifts during heating led us to conclude that the approach with surplus bands is advantageous and we recommend using major F_2g band shifts to estimate the sample heating.