The NiO-coated LiFePO4 composite cathode materials were prepared by simple tailored polyol technique, which has orthorhombic olivine structure without NiO phase. It delivers the reverse capacity of 164 mAh g(-1) at 0.1 degrees C at ambient temperature. The material exhibits stable reverse capacity for several cycles even for the higher C-rates. Increasing the rate, the reverse capacity is almost stable over several cycles. Furthermore, at a high rate viz., 10, 20 and 30 degrees C, the discharge capacity has been observed for the optimized NiO-coated LFP as 135, 120 and 69 mAh g(-1), which demonstrates the excellent rate performance that can be useful for high power lithium secondary battery. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.