Volume 39, Issue 1 pp. 32-42
Chemistry Authors Up Close

Efforts towards Practical and Sustainable Li/Na-Air Batteries

Kai Chen

Kai Chen

State Key Laboratory of Rare Earth Resources Utilization, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun, Jilin, 130022 China

University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, 230026 China

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Gang Huang

Gang Huang

Materials Science and Engineering, Physical Science and Engineering Division, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thu situ Designing a Gradient wal, 23955-6900 Saudi Arabia

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Xin-Bo Zhang

Corresponding Author

Xin-Bo Zhang

State Key Laboratory of Rare Earth Resources Utilization, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun, Jilin, 130022 China

University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, 230026 China

E-mail: [email protected]Search for more papers by this author
First published: 23 August 2020
Citations: 28

Abstract

The Li-O2 batteries have attracted much attention due to their parallel theoretical energy density to gasoline. In the past 20 years, understanding and knowledge in Li-O2 battery have greatly deepened in elucidating the relationship between structure and performance. Our group has been focusing on the cathode engineering and anode protection strategy development in the past years, trying to make full use of the superiority of metal-air batteries towards applications. In this review, we aim to retrospect our efforts in developing practical, sustainable metal-air batteries. We will first introduce the basic working principle of Li-O2 batteries and our progresses in Li-O2 batteries with typical cathode designs and anode protection strategies, which have together promoted the large capacity, long life and low charge overpotential. We emphasize the designing art of carbon-based cathodes in this part along with a short talk on all-metal cathodes. The following part is our research in Na-O2 batteries including both cathode and anode optimizations. The differences between Li-O2 and Na-O2 batteries are also briefly discussed. Subsequently, our proof-of-concept work on Li-N2 battery, a new energy storage system and chemistry, is discussed with detailed information on the discharge product identification. Finally, we summarize our designed models and prototypes of flexible metal-air batteries that are promising to be used in flexible devices to deliver more power.

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