To further test the proposed mechanism and to amplify any changes to materials properties arising from the different reaction pathways, we additionally investigated calcination using only the largest Li 2 CO 3 particles from the as-received material. Specifically, we used particles > 100 µm selected by sieving (the "large Li" pathway, denoted LL-LMR). This size was selected to ensure no Li source particles would be within an order of magnitude in diameter of the TM source particles. Indeed, the LL-LMR pathway follows the pattern established by the SL-LMR and AR-LMR comparison: even more mass loss is observed at the melting point of Li 2 CO 3 in the LL-LMR case than the AR-LMR case, while the total mass loss remains the same (Figure ).