Batteries are often the heaviest, costliest and the least-green component of electronic devices, and are currently the bottleneck in the large-scale deployment of stationary energy storage for smart grid and automotive energy storage for electric vehicles. Among various battery technologies, Li-O₂ battery possesses the highest theoretical energy density and is regarded as the “Holy Grail” for next generation electrochemical energy storage. While numerous profound studies have been done to understand the battery chemistry, challenges relating to surface passivation and pore clogging by Li₂O₂ precipitation on the gas diffusion cathode remain. This severely impairs the round-trip energy efficiency and limits the achievable capacity of the cell. In this talk, a conceptually new and implementable solution — redox flow lithium-oxygen battery (RFLOB) [1] will be introduced, to address these critical issues confronted by Li-O₂ battery. This novel device was devised based on reversible redox targeting of battery materials, and the recent advancement of redox flow lithium-ion batteries [2]. As demonstrated here, RFLOB combines great system flexibility of the redox flow battery with the extremely high energy density of the Li-O₂ batteries, revealing significant advantages over other state-of-the-art electrochemical energy storage devices [3,4].

References:

[1] Y. G. Zhu, C. Jia, J. Yang, F. Pan, Q. Huang, and Q. Wang, Chem. Comm., 2015, 51, 9451-9454.

[2] C. Jia, F. Pan, Y. G. Zhu, Q. Huang, L. Lu, and Q. Wang, Science Advances, 2015, 1, e1500886.

[3] Y. G. Zhu, X. Wang, C. Jia, J. Yang, and Q. Wang, ACS Catalysis, 2016, 6, 6191–6197.

[4] Y. G. Zhu, et al., Nat. Commun., 2017, 8, 14308.