2015 Volume 56 Issue 9 Pages 1448-1451
Soft X-ray absorption near-edge structures (XANES) at the L2,3-edges of transition metal has been widely used for investigating the chemical reactions during charge-discharge cycles in the cathode materials of lithium ion batteries. In order to extract the information about the electronic structures from the experimental results, however, a theoretical tool that can deal with the strong electronic correlations between 2p and 3d electrons is necessary. In this study, the ab-initio multiplet method based on the relativistic configuration interaction (CI) method has been applied to the calculations of Fe-L2,3 XANES of LiFePO4 and FePO4. Experimental XANES spectra were quantitatively reproduced by this method. The effects of local symmetries around Fe ions to the spectral shapes were also discussed.