Lithium (Li) is one of the critical industrial materials and an indispensable component in manufacturing Li-ion/Li batteries. However, Li resource is very limited and geographically uneven in earth’s crust and its mining is costly and not sustainable. Hence, cost-effective Li recovery (from brines, seawater or used cells) is desired but suffered from the low efficiency, poor ion-selectivity, and high processing cost. Here, we report a novel Li extraction and utilization technology to recover Li from low-Li solutions into a form of Li resource, which can be directly used for battery materials production. By using both Li-ion selective Li1.5Al0.5Ge1.5(PO4)3 (LAGP) membrane and low-cost electrolytic manganese dioxide (EMD) host material, the costly steps of Li separation and refining were eliminated. Li-ion cathodes (e.g., spinel LiMn2O4 and layered LiNixMnyCozO2) synthesized through this approach have high phase purities and show significant economic superiorities (e.g., $12.8/kg for LiMn2O4) over other Li extraction methods and even commercial cathodes ($15/kg for LiMn2O4). This contribution provides a potential technical approach to overcome the challenges of both Li supply and battery cost for future electrification and decarbonization of socioeconomic system.
