Promising bifunctional catalysts for aqueous Lithium-Air Batteries: Influence of catalyst composition, molarity and temperature on the activity

Abstract

Lithium-Air Batteries (LAB) are one of the most promising upcoming energy storage devices. With a theoretical energy density of 11680 Wh/kg [1] and a practical energy density around 1700Wh/kg [1] LAB´s have comparable energy densities to gasoline. Furthermore a practical energy density of 1700 Wh/kg would mean a 5-10 [2] fold increase over todays Li-Ion Batteries (LIB) with 100-200 Wh/kg [1]. One of the major limiting factors on performance and round-trip efficiency is the catalyst used. Today´s LAB´s still suffer from high charge- and discharge overpotentials caused by insufficient catalysts. The major goal is to reduce overpotentials by using bifunctional catalysts catalyzing both the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) as well as the oxygen evolution reaction (OER). Noble metal catalysts show good performance on both reactions [3] but with increasing prices of noble metals metal oxides [4] have drawn attention recently. This poster will show the most promising metal oxide catalysts for Lithium-Air Batteries in aqueous alkaline electrolytes resulting from a previous wide range catalyst screening. The influence of varying catalysts compositions, molarity and temperature on the activity was investigated regarding the suitability for Lithium-Air Batteries.

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