Mesoporous Carbon Supported Cobalt and Iron Binary Hydroxide Catalyst for Cathode in Non-aqueous Li-air Batteries

• Published in: International journal of electrochemical science 2015-11, Vol.10 (11), p.8982-8992
• Main Authors: Hwang, Imgon, Lee, Gibaek, Tak, Yongsug
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: binary catalyst; CoO/FeO/CMK-3; Li-O2 battery; mesoporous carbon; non-aqueous electrolyte
• ISSN: 1452-3981; 1452-3981
• DOI: 10.1016/S1452-3981(23)11153-9

The rechargeable Li-air battery represents an attractive energy storage device for various applications because of its theoretical energy storage capacity (~3000 Wh/kg) compared with that of Li-ion batteries. However, the efficiency of Li-air batteries is limited by the large cathodic overpotential for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER). This article demonstrates that a binary hydroxide catalyst composed of iron (Fe) and cobalt (Co) supported on mesoporous carbon material such as CMK-3 can address this problem with a non-aqueous electrolyte of 1M LiTFSI in TEGDME. The mesoporous Co(OH)2-Fe(OH)2/CMK-3 catalyst showed remarkable overpotential reduction and achieved a fairly stable cyclability for 20 cycles at 0.2 mA/g compared with the carbon black support. Moreover, the physical analysis confirms that the feature of mesoporous structure is beneficial to the diffusion of oxygen during the discharge process and the decomposition of discharge products during the charge process.