The intermediate phase of NiS2 is thought to be a bottleneck currently to improve the overall performance of Li/NiS2 thermal batteries because of its low conductivity and close formation enthalpy between NiS2 and the intermediate phase (NiS, Ni3S2, etc). For improving the discharge performances of Li/Nis(2) thermal batteries, the nano NiS2 with an average size of 85 +/- 5 nm is designated as a cathode material. The electrochemical measurements show that the specific capacity of nano NiS2 cathode is higher than micro NiS2. The nano NiS2 cathode exhibits excellent electrochemical performances with high specific capacities of 794 and 654 mAh g(-1) at current density of 0.1 and 0.5 A cm(-2) under a cut-off voltage of 0.5 V, respectively. These results show that the rapid intermediate phase evolution from the nano crystallization can obviously enhance use efficiency of NiS2 and improve discharge performances of thermal batteries. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.